Dear Future Gamer,

I read P. Tupman's letter with quite a bit of interest. Yes backward-compatibility is an excellent idea in principle (it enables you to keep the games you've already got), but I'd just like to relate this to a little bit of history.

During the '80s and early '90s, I was a big fan of the Atari ST. Despite not having quite the same bells and whistles as the Amiga (which, I remember, was originally designed as a console, whereas the ST was always intended as a home computer), it had some excellent games. When the Amiga finally started to get the same number of users as the ST, Atari responded by releasing the STE, which had most of the same capabilities as the Amiga, but was backwards-compatible with most of the STFM games.

Four years and over 400,000 new users later, only a handful of programmers were utilising the STE's capabilities, because it would stop STFM users from being able to use those games. The result? The ST lost large numbers of sales because software companies refused to release new software utilising the STEs capabilities, so they stopped producing games altogether.

Though backward-compatability is not necessarily a bad thing (Pentiums can still run 286 software, for the most part). I think Sony should think carefully if they want to introduce it to the new PlayStation.

Paul Talbot

FG: I think this is a slightly different argument, although I do take your point. The main reason people didn’t write STE-specific games was because the STFM user base was much bigger. For a game to be a commercial success, it needed to work on STFM machines. PlayStation 2 is not the PlayStation. Developers will eventually abandon the PlayStation once the PlayStation 2’s user base has grown sufficiently. PlayStation 2 owners will still be able to enjoy their back catalogue of games, as well as experiencing the new, improved PlayStation 2-specific titles. If other gamers also want this experience they will have to buy a PlayStation 2. They can still play their old PlayStation games but they won’t need to buy any more. The console market is able to evolve much easier than the home computer market because of the prices of the machines. An Atari STFM used to cost some £499 and an STE something like £599. People don’t want to spend that much on an upgrade that isn’t significantly different. People won’t mind buying a PlayStation now for £100 and upgrading at the back end of next year to a significantly better machine for only about £250 (hopefully). And that price will drop as sales increase.