eli5 How can PC games from literally 1998 run from the PCs of today but you can’t play older console games from the current consoles?

Question

why is “backwards incompatibility” a problem on consoles and not on pc when they’re basically just the same electronic parts (cpu, gpu, ram)

In: 7

Answer 1

Your computer can run an old computer game for the same reason it can (with the right preparation) run an old console game. It is a flexible machine that is much more powerful than computers from decades ago, so it is capable of emulating the hardware that the original games ran on. Modern consoles are also quite powerful but not nearly as flexible. They’re built to direct all of that power to certain activities like rendering graphics.