That's always confused me btw in regard to PC gaming, why are PC's so much more backwards compatible than gaming consoles? I can still play games from 10-15 years ago on my PC, but I can't play a GameCube game on the Wii U which is much more powerful in every spec? What is it about game consoles that makes standard system requirements irrelevant?
It's often technical limitations. The PS3, for example, needed to have some of the PS2's parts in it to do full backwards compatibility, which added cost. The reason is because the hardware's architecture is different. Emulation is also difficult to do, but I don't know how emulators work, other than that you need hardware several times more powerful than the original hardware to do it properly.
Also, PCs have had mostly the same core architecture since the 80s. Things have obviously changed a lot, but not as drastically as consoles.
--
Zachnorn Everything = overrated.
http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/4503/qrcode857546.th.png