Current Events > How come you can't transfer PlayStation 3 digital games to your PlayStation 4?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's because you don't actually own them.

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The real answer is because the PlayStation 4 literally can't play PS3 games. Emulating the PS3 is a disaster as it is.

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Each system is its own ecosystem and there's no way to guarantee all purchases will be viable on future consoles. Though a company with ethics would allow transfer/upgrades for games that do meet certain requirements, such as virtual console, classics, etc.

Nemu posted...

Each system is its own ecosystem and there's no way to guarantee all purchases will be viable on future consoles. Though a company with ethics would allow transfer/upgrades for games that do meet certain requirements, such as virtual console, classics, etc.

That's not it at all. Pretty much anything you bought on PSP could be downloaded to Vita and (if PSOne games) PS3. Basically all PS4 purchases can be downloaded on ps5. It has more to do with whether or not the console can actually play those games.

The PS4 and PS5 can't play PS3 games, and a half-assed solution to it is PlayStation now. I highly doubt Sony will ever figure out a way to directly emulate PS3 games on PS5, because the cell architecture is so stupidly complicated.

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Can you use your ps3 discs in a ps4?

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Microsoft was smart by investing so heavily into backwards compatibility on Xbox One, because that transitioned easily to series X. Sony, on the other hand, made no attempt to find ways around the cell architecture through emulation, which means we probably will never see PS3 games natively compatible on their consoles.

Fortunately for both of them, last generation consoles and current generation consoles are x86, so backwards compatibility runs natively and benefits from performance gains as we've seen.

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Corporate greed.

And gamers allow themselves to be stepped on saying "it would be too much work, how could we expect it???? How???"

DarkRoast posted...

The real answer is because the PlayStation 4 literally can't play PS3 games. Emulating the PS3 is a disaster as it is.

lmao

there you go

Jabodie posted...

Can you use your ps3 discs in a ps4?

Imagine buying a digital game and then not being able to play it on your account on another system.

On literally a more powerful system.

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Because they gotta resell those games man

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WingsOfGood posted...

lmao

there you go

I get that it comes across as corporate apologetics, but that's not how I meant it. The bottom line is that Sony f***** up the PS3's architecture so bad, it's probably not even worth the effort to find ways to emulate it on PS4 and ps5. I highly doubt they ever could have got it running on PS4, but if they really wanted to they probably could get it up on PS5, though I doubt they would find it worth the effort.

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Sony really screwed up with putting everything into the Cell processor on the PS3.

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Blue_Inigo posted...

Because they gotta resell those games man

ding ding ding ding ding ding ding

SrRd_RacinG posted...

Imagine buying a digital game and then not being able to play it on your account on another system.

On literally a more powerful system.

More powerful doesnt mean anything. By that logic a ps3 game should run flawlessly on an Xbox series S. The PS4 doesnt have ps3 hardware and emulating it would be a bitch. You still own the games. Thats like saying what I cant put my ps1 disk into my Xbox 360? Its more powerful what a joke!

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DarkRoast posted...

it's probably not even worth the effort to find ways to emulate it on PS4 and ps5.

Worth the effort in terms of what? In terms of what makes more money? Selling a new "version" of an old game vs. allowing a customer to keep a game they had bought before?

The real truth is if gamers actually threw a big fit and got really mad about this, they would have spent the time to make it work. But instead gamers said "understandable" and bought a new "ver" of the game.

SrRd_RacinG posted...

Imagine buying a digital game and then not being able to play it on your account on another system.

On literally a more powerful system.

Yes, it's stupid. But have you seen how the PS3 is designed? The CPU alone has like 7 cores, arranged in a manner that no other console or even computer uses. Developers absolutely hated the PS3 because the architecture made zero sense. It was a dumpster fire of a console from a programming perspective, and although you could pull off some impressive visuals, it was only because of the skill of the developer and not the potential of the console. The Xbox 360, for all of its faults, was a far more simple architecture, which allowed for easier backwards compatibility. PS3 emulation is just awful, and requires an extraordinarily disproportionate amount of PC hardware to achieve similar results to Xbox 360 emulation.

There's a reason that the PS5 can play all major PS4 games - the architectures are very similar. In the case of Xbox One and Xbox 360, the main difference was 360 using PowerPC CPU architecture, but that in itself was not impossible to overcome because emulation of power PC on x86 was already a thing on Macs.

The PS3 is basically in its own universe in terms of hardware design, and there's nothing like it whatsoever. Consoles that were complicated like that, including the 32x and the Sega Saturn, proved to be notoriously difficult to emulate.

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As a programmer, the 7 cores architecture argument is hogwash unless the devs purposely designed games to be multithreaded. I guess this is possible for the super high fidelity graphics games on the ps3, but most games it would not seem to me to have done this. I mention this because you don't code differently due to the arrangement of the cores or cpu unless you are doing some really niche and specific programming. Otherwise you just doing the same coding as you did for the 360.
But I can see why gamers who never really programmed buy into this. Great corporate propaganda tbh.

WingsOfGood posted...

As a programmer, the 7 cores architecture argument is hogwash unless the devs purposely designed games to be multithreaded. I guess this is possible for the super high fidelity graphics games on the ps3, but most games it would not seem to me to have done this.

But that's exactly it, the cell didn't work like a multi-threaded processor. There's some YouTube videos discussing how it worked, but basically each core was only capable of a small percentage of what a normal CPU core could accomplish, meaning if a game was programmed for single threaded performance, it often ran into immediate CPU bottlenecks.

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PS4 games being BC on PS5 hasn't stopped Sony or Rock Star from reselling upgraded next gen versions of those games.

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DarkRoast posted...

But that's exactly it, the cell didn't work like a multi-threaded processor. There's some YouTube videos discussing how it worked, but basically each core was only capable of a small percentage of what a normal CPU core could accomplish, meaning if a game was programmed for single threaded performance, it often ran into immediate CPU bottlenecks.

So can games with crappy 2d graphics be easily ported? The answer should be yes as they do not require high CPU performance.
We both know the answer. Now, just gotta wonder why that is the answer....
@DarkRoast

WingsOfGood posted...

So can games with crappy 2d graphics be easily ported? The answer should be yes as they do not require high CPU performance.
We both know the answer. Now, just gotta wonder why that is the answer....
@DarkRoast

What does 2D or 3D have to do with CPU performance? Game physics and logic can still be CPU bottlenecked in 2D games. Dead Cells on Switch, for example.

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DarkRoast posted...

What does 2D or 3D have to do with CPU performance? Game physics and logic can still be CPU bottlenecked in 2D games. Dead Cells on Switch, for example.

Find a game that is super low CPU performance. Has it been ported?
Can it be?

Why is the answer no?

WingsOfGood posted...

Find a game that is super low CPU performance. Has it been ported?
Can it be?

Why is the answer no?

Why would Sony make a PS3 backwards compatibility layer that only works for a handful of 2D games? That doesn't make any sense. If you're going to do backwards compatibility like that, you might as well just release native versions of those games. Xbox has a far superior backwards compatibility set up.

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https://youtu.be/lLebZyha74o

Basically here's the answer

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DarkRoast posted...

Why would Sony make a PS3 backwards compatibility layer that only works for a handful of 2D games?

They shouldn't have to do this for a lower performance game. The argument was when the processors had to do a lot of work, they have to code ps3 games in a weird way to utilize the architecture.
This would not be required however when the processors did not have to do a lot of work.

It would be no different than coding for a 360 or pc.

WingsOfGood posted...

Find a game that is super low CPU performance. Has it been ported?
Can it be?

Why is the answer no?

Because emulation and porting are two very, very different things. Porting would be something the devs of the game would have to do (or at least, licence to someone else to do).

Let me put this as bluntly as I can for you. Go find yourself a PS3 emulator on PC. Stick it on the most powerful PC you can find. Keep in mind that this emulator has been in the works, most likely by a team of NEETs with nothing else to do, almost since the PS3 came out. Observe what the performance and compatibility is like.

Now keep in mind that a PS5, let alone a PS4, is much, MUCH less powerful than "the most powerful PC you can find".

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6:27 in that video is a good little illustration.

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Trumble posted...

Because emulation and porting are two very, very different things. Porting would be something the devs of the game would have to do (or at least, licence to someone else to do).

Let me put this as bluntly as I can for you. Go find yourself a PS3 emulator on PC. Stick it on the most powerful PC you can find. Keep in mind that this emulator has been in the works, most likely by a team of NEETs with nothing else to do, almost since the PS3 came out. Observe what the performance and compatibility is like.

Now keep in mind that a PS5, let alone a PS4, is much, MUCH less powerful than "the most powerful PC you can find".

Hell, even the team that made the PC PS3 emulator said it's unlikely that Sony can get it running on the PS5 simply because the architecture for the SPEs require a level of synchronization that consoles would need actual dedicated hardware to accomplish. Even with the single most powerful computer you can buy, only 60% of PS3 games are even playable on the PC PS3 emulator, and that percentage drops a lot if you use AMD instead of Intel because AMD processors don't have a comparable feature set.

It's honestly pretty absurd that Sony built the PS3 the way they did.

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