[toast0]

I think a PS6 needs to play PS5 games, or Sony will have a hard time selling them until the PS6 catalog is big; and they'll have a hard time getting 3rd party developers if they're going to have a hard time with console sales. I don't think you're going to play existing PS5 games on an ARM CPU unless it's an "amazing" core. Apple does pretty good at running x86 code on their CPUs, but they added special modes to make it work, and I don't know how timing sensitive PS5 games are --- when there's only a handful of hardware variants, you can easily end up with tricky timing requirements.

[bigstrat2003]

I mean, the PS4 didn't play PS3 games and that didn't hurt it any. Backwards compatibility is nice but it isn't the only factor.

[bigfishrunning]

The first year of PS4 was pretty dry because of the lack of BC; It really helped that the competition was the Xbox One, which was less appealing for a lot of reasons

[MBCook]

At this point people have loved the PS5 and Xbox Series for having full backwards compatibility. The Xbox goes even further through software. People liked the Wii’s backwards compatibility and the Wii U (for those who had it).

And Nintendo’s long chain of BC from the GB to the 3DS (though eventually dropping GB/GBC) was legendary.

The Switch was such a leap over the 3DS and WiiU Nintendo got away with it. It’s had such a long life having no BC could be a huge hit if the Switch 2 didn’t have it.

I think all three intended to try and keep it going forward at this point.

[pjmlp]

Which is also the reason why many games on PS 5 and XBox Series are kind of lame, as studios want to keep PS 4 and XBone gamers in the sales loop, and why PS 5 Pro is more of scam kind of thing for hardcore fans that will buy anything that a console vendor puts out.

[nottorp]

One data point: there was no chip shortage at the PS4 launch, but I still waited more than a year to get one because there was little to play on it.

While with the PS5 I got one as soon as I could (that still took more than a year since launch, but for chip shortage reasons) because I knew I could simply replace the PS4 with it under the TV and carry on.

[philistine]

We're not in 2012 anymore. Modern players don't only want a clean break to play the new AAA games every month, they also want access to a large indie marketplace, they also want the games they play every day, they also want to improve the performance of the games they already have.