Free Step Dodge

Since many of the older games don't get re-released for the new consoles and not everyone can preserve their older consoles to play the older games on the hardware they were released it'd be nice if people were able to play them, especially games/series that are a thing of the past now (Silent Hill, Sly Cooper etc.). Sometimes it feels nice to go back to older games instead of playing new ones as well.

Experiencing some franchises before the huge change that came later on can also be a refreshing feeling in a way, God of War, if a new game were to come, would probably have a slightly altered gameplay of the ps4 game but It'd be nice if people would be able to go back to the older GoW's. Plus backwards compatibility would mean that I don't need to use emulators every single time I want to play an older game.

For convenience, I still have my ps2 and ps3 but if they one day god forbid stop working, it'd be nice to have a console I can play my games on since once you lose a ps2/3, that's it unless you can get a used one which may not be fully working or scarce and higher priced

I guess the main thing is people want to get rid of their old console once the new one comes in. For me it's mostly for the convenience and coziness of having everything on one console, although I don't care much either way.

Convenience, bigger game library (since you have access to past releases) and, for players who may not owned the last console, they can experience it without having to purchase one. I honestly don't know why this ain't a more common thing nowadays when it was in the early 2000s with the PS2 and even the PS3.

Yeah, only with the first models though, the models after that only had backwards compatibility with ps1 games and since then there hasn't been one console or one model of a console from Sony that had full backwards compatibility. Kind of ironic, Xbox One has and the Xfridge will have full backwards compatibility but their exclusive are nowhere near as great as the PS's, which might be why they want to have that.

Don't get me wrong I like backwards compatibility, but I still remember the bitching from back in 2006 & 2007 when the PS3 cost $600 USD/$660 CAD, a system that had full PS2 & PS1 hardware compatibility. Do people want the PS5 to cost, like, $700+? Sony inevitably removed backwards compatibility from 2008 onwards in PS3's to help keep the cost down.

On a different note, XBone X does backwards compatibility the best out of any of the major consoles. I mean some games like FF13 trilogy or Ninja Gaiden Black, for instance, are effectively 1080p remasters for free (if you still had the disk or a digital copy).

Would rather pay more and keep BC - emulation has improved, but ultimately falls apart as soon as you get to titles released after online DRM/content distribution had become prevalent. Preservation > a few weeks of take-away meals, or a new pair of shoes.

Too many good games lost, which have never been improved upon in more recent franchise updates.

I personally don't mind paying $700 for a PS5, but I can guarantee people will bitch if the PS5 gets priced high. A lot of people complained about the PS3's $599 pricepoint back in 2006 and as a result Sony kinda cheaped out relatively on the PS4/PS4 Pro in comparison.

Also keep in mind that many classics get "remastered" or even remade too.

That's only a select few, Ninja Gaiden and FFXIII dont have remasters but with Xbox One X I essentially have that for those games. Also having an old game actually run decently with no drops is nice some 360 games barely run at 30fps without dipping into the 20s or even teens whereon Xbox one they're a smooth constant 30 even without X enhancements. That is the appeal to BC to me.

That's only with XBone though. It's the only main console BC that can considerably improve the compatible older games, to the point of essentially remastering some. No other console is going to go to the same lengths because Microsoft was using BC specifically as a selling point for the XBone over the PS4.

Even if there's classics that get remastered, in the long run you'll pay more buying all the remasters than just paying once for the console's full price and being able to play those games without needing a remaster tbh

Emulation will never be perfect. You can play most of the older games on most emulators on PC with 60 fps with an ok-ish gaming PC/Laptop, although, not all of them, but if you want to play some games on rpcs3 or a 360 emulator, then you need a beast of a cpu just in order to be able to play a couple of games on 60 or close to 60 fps.