Sony Doesn’t Believe That Backwards Compatibility Is That Important

We're seeing all sorts of comments today from Sony execs leading up to next week's showcase at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, including controversial comments about the PlayStation Vita. But this may take the cake, especially for those that were wondering why it wasn't more interested in supporting backwards compatibility on its console.

Speaking with Time Magazine, Sony global sales chief Jim Ryan noted that backward compatibility probably wouldn't be used that much by gamers if it were introduced to the PlayStation 4 landscape. That said, he didn't mention specific examples, like with the PlayStation Now service (featuring a variety of PlayStation 3 games) and those PS2-to-PS4 ports that have been picking up speed.

"When we've dabbled with backwards compatibility, I can say it is one of those features that is much requested, but not actually used much," Ryan said. "That, and I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games, and the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?"

The thing is, backward compatibility is quite popular on the Xbox One front. Microsoft introduced the feature a while back for the system, and since then, we've seen countless Xbox 360 classics that have gone in high demand on the system, like Red Dead Redemption and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

In the past, PlayStation's Shuhei Yoshida had talked about backward compatibility, noting that it was "hard." "I won't say we'll never do it, but it's not an easy thing to do. If it was easy, we would have done that." That said, the PlayStation Now service and PS2-to-PS4 ports, as we mentioned earlier, have done moderate business.

Could Sony be announcing something down the road to make PlayStation Now more practical, with a mixture of PS3 and PS4 games on the service? For that matter, will we see more PS2-to-PS4 ports, like the Jak and Daxter series coming our way this fall? Only time will tell, but we're less than a week away.

In the meantime, hey, we'll take backward compatibility. Nothing beats the classics.