Turns Out The Xbox Series S Is Really Good At Playing PS2 Games

MVG is awsome..

Get it to run PS3 games and we'll all have a good laugh.

It's really the perfect companion console to a PS5. Sony's BC and gamepass...why not.

Honestly, BC is the most exciting part about Xbox for me right now. Currently playing through Sonic Adventure 2 again. Great times!

Haha, that's hilarious. I have to wonder though, why Sony is always holding back so much/investing so little in backwards compatibility. On PS3 it started out right, but then they slowly dialed it down until it all but disappeared, and like on Xbox, I'm pretty sure that there's an audience for playing these older games on PlayStation as well, so far as I'm concerned, it's a HUGE missed opportunity for them.

Really cool stuff! Not something I'd ever use but its cool that its possible!

My PS2 is still plugged into my tv still gets used.

This is hilarious & very ironic.

Xbox handles PlayStation backwards compatibility better than Sony does. 😂

@ThanosReXXX At that time, the PS3 had to basically carry the PS2 CPU in the motherboard to do the retrocompat. They cut it to reduce the PS3 price when it struggled, and since they got away with it, well, retrocompatbility was burried.

@Richnj i genuinely want to see this happen lol. But that's not gonna happen until a group of passionate UWP coders deciced to work with RPCS3 devs to port the software to UWP.

LOL... Very interesting and can't wait until someone decided to port rpcs3, ryujinx, yuzu, cemu, & citra to UWP

@Grot True! Like, very true.

Almost as ironic as my Mac running windows better than any windows machine I’ve had!

@Kamalen Yeah, I know, but they definitely shot themselves in the foot there. And besides: current and last gen Xboxes also don't have a SoC anymore, so that's no excuse either.

@ThanosReXXX Based on sales of all generations for Sony, I'll say the bullet missed the foot.

And yes they totally could emulate previous gen. But what's the point for Sony ; people still buy the hardware and the remaster cash machine has to be milked.

@Grot

Exactly!

@Kamalen

It comes down to the different philosophies of these companies.

Sony’s buffoon of a CEO Jim Ryan says “nobody plays old games”, but he’ll sure love to take your $ for a remaster of a PS3 game on PS5 (Demon’s Souls).

And they’ll sell you a PS2 game on their store, but not let you put your old disc in the console & just let it work. 🙄

And their fanbase will defend that stupid decision for them. 😂 It’s just Sony being Sony.

Edit - spelling error.

@Kamalen I'm gonna have to agree with @KelticDevil there. The fact that older games are still so popular on a multitude of systems, speaks volumes. The fact that Sony chooses to not take a piece of that pie is to their own disadvantage, so the foot is most definitely NOT missed.

Regardless of results/ratings, the counter is now back to zero, so how successful they were doesn't count anymore. You're only as good as your last success and currently, even while still making some small mistakes along the way, Microsoft is surpassing them on several fronts and levels.

So, they need to step up and (partial) emulation of PS4 titles definitely isn't going to cut it.

@ThanosReXXX But your premise is wrong. Sony is going for the pie, but for the fattest parts (subscriptions to PsNow, remasters and possible single games sold separately and emulated, PS3/nintendo style).

Offering full on retrocompatibility with just the disk bring no money, as the games themselves are no longer sold. And its absence has yet to prove detrimental (it doesn't for now).

@Kamalen

@ThanosReXXX’s point is not wrong. Just because Sony would rather $ gouge their fanbase by making them pay $ to play their older games doesn’t make it right.

And just because it hasn’t come back to bite them yet, that doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. It’s a new generation & anything can happen.

I have seen many people on this website say they bought an XSX/S specifically for backwards compatibility & Game Pass. And Game Pass having tons of backwards compatible games is part of what makes it a great value.

In fact, even EA Play is much better on Xbox because of backwards compatibility with the 360 era of the games on that service. On PlayStation, EA Play it’s way different because they can’t get PS3 games to run on a PS5. 🙄

But to each their own. If you like paying for your games over & over again, I’m sure Sony & Nintendo would love to take your money. Lol.

@AJDarkstar True, but it's only one additional chip, needed for processing/emulating, but it's not a self-contained SoC, and that's a BIG difference.

@Kamalen No offense but no, my premise is not wrong. You're either looking at it in the wrong way, or I haven't explained it well enough, but either way: my point stands firmly.

@KelticDevil Certainty not saying I like it. Just stating it's how Sony is "doing" retrocompatibility. Kinda the same policy that Nintendo actually. Being dominant in the market for now, they can clearly get away with such practice.

We like Microsoft for doing the nice thing, but never forget it's the dramatic failure of XBOne that pushed there. Were the market share inverted, we certainly won't have any of that.

@Kamalen

Don’t get me wrong......I agree that the market leader has clearly shown, in the past, the sheer arrogance to do things that are just plain stupid.

Microsoft did it with the Xbox One. And Sony did it with the PS3. Nintendo did it with the N64 & the Wii U.

But with a new generation, we get a refresh. And so far, under Jim Ryan (who just reminds me of Don Mattrick), Sony looks like they are getting arrogant again.

As Xbox fans, it has almost helped us that Microsoft has had to win back their 360 fanbase, so we get them trying to earn our money. Sony comes off as they are giving you the “privilege” to give them your $. I guess we’ll see how it all plays out.

@KelticDevil We have the same analysis.

I feel like Sony, especially outside of the USA, have a totally dominant position and thus will get away with any form of arrogance.

@AJDarkstar I know, and I'm not debating that, so that also wasn't my point. My actual point is that, besides some minor mistakes, Microsoft is doing everything right with this new generation, while Sony is most definitely dropping the ball by leaving a number of opportunities behind, multi-generational backwards compatibility being one of the most glaring omissions.

@AJDarkstar You can cross off that faster SSD, since that has already been debunked. Yes, the numbers say its faster, but it's crippled by weaker processing power and some other weaker components, so in practice/actual usage, the difference is more or less negligible.

Besides, both systems load games incredibly fast, so I don't think most people will really notice or be bothered by it. That's more something for number fetishists, or saying that your Ferrari F1 car is faster than the MacLaren F1 car, while both of them are more than capable of reaching speeds of more than 200mph...

(Edit: and having a faster engine also doesn't matter much if your tires and brake system aren't up to scratch)

I've indeed read about PS4 BC being pretty good, but why not go the extra mile like Microsoft, and also offer BC for older games? They even have an extra generation to offer compared to Microsoft, so that could potentially be a huge plus.

Meanwhile, Microsoft only had to make minor tweaks to an online service and BC catalog that was already nearly flawless, and even after all this time, Sony is still lagging behind in that regard.

@AJDarkstar No offense, but you still seem to miss my point(s) and we're drifting off into off topic stuff that is irrelevant to the discussion, which makes the discussion itself borderline useless.

I would hope that even if we'll never completely agree, that we'd at least be able to meet in the middle at some point, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

The final thing I'll say about this, and I'll try to make it as clear as possible, is that my F1 analogy was also meant to point out that both systems are fast, so if one is even faster still, that it doesn't matter in the grander scheme of things, seeing as both are faster than their predecessors.

So, if one has near-instant loading and the other has instant loading, then both are a MASSIVE improvement over the previous generation and to me and many others, any other numerical or physical difference is therefore negligible.

Online, I see entire populations of idiot fanboys going crazy over a difference of a handful of seconds and to me, that's just completely insane and beyond stupid.

@AJDarkstar True enough, and that for me is the only thing I'm looking for: improvements compared to my current box under the TV. They can be incremental, like fine-tuning what is already good in the first place, or it can be a move to something better, like now with solid state drives. Comparisons between systems and/or other generations to see if the improvements are really "revolutionary" enough, let alone comparing them to PC (because PC's could already do all that AGES ago, doh) don't interest me in the slightest.

I like my convenience, so I'll always be a console gamer first and foremost. But both my free time and budget is limited, so I've opted to go for two platforms, ever since two generations ago, when I bought the Wii and the Xbox 360, and I've gone for the same two brands in the following generation as well.

Coupled with that comes the fact that most of Sony's first party stuff doesn't interest me at all, save for Spider-Man and God of War, which for me does not validate having to buy another box for, and there's no incentive for me whatsoever to consider adding that system to my home as well.

Which in turn makes any and all comparisons in what they do or do not offer game- or tech/hardware wise completely irrelevant, because it'll only ever be a list of numbers on paper, seeing as I'm not going to reap any benefits from them.

Anyway, I think I've personally said all I can or want to say about the topic, so I hope you don't mind me taking my leave of this article comments section...

Good discussion though, in general. It's always comforting to know that there actually are still people online that can express themselves in an eloquent manner, and can engage in a normal, adult discussion without letting their raging fanboy out, even if they don't necessarily agree on everything...