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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7992458" data-attributes="member: 18">I think this is a short-sighted take because it ignores the history of backwards compatibility in consoles, and the changes in their basic design in the most recent generations.Historically, backwards-compatibility was indeed abandoned, because the costs of maintaining it were too great. They were too great because each console generation was designed in an entirely different way. They didn't have the same basic way of operating as the previous generation, let alone the same chips. The main exception being the Xbox - which was far more backward compatible, because of its PC-like design.Now, both major consoles have PC-like designs. The PS4 and the Xbox One, and the PS5 and Xbox SX are all PC-like. Backwards compatibility, after being intentionally abandoned, has not only intentionally been brought back, but has been brought back in a major way. Why? Because its important to consumers. They don't want to lose all the games they bought previously. They don't want multiple consoles sitting in the living room. The console developers gain more benefit by maintaining compatibility than potentially selling the same game twice (they get little benefit from that). And they're extending, not truncating this. Further, with the new generation they're going as far as to say with some games, that if you buy the previous-gen version, it won't just be backwards-compatible, you'll actually just be given the next-gen version if you buy the next gen console and transfer your account to it.This is because retaining you as a customer is important. Yeah, they could potentially make you re-buy a bunch of stuff, but that causes bad will, and further, gives you the chance to say "Hmmmm, maybe I will not to do that...".And there's a great example of this in D&D's history. 4E was effectively not backwards-compatible. It was less backwards-compatible than any previous edition change, including 2E-3E (which wasn't very but kinda sorta kinda was). That caused exactly the problem described, and caused a big win for Paizo when lots of people decided actually they wanted to stick with an upgrade to their existing console, instead of going to a different console, as it were. So I think its safe to say any 6E will be backwards-compatible with 5E to a large extent. Not perfectly, I'm sure, but probably at least to the degree 1E and 2E were (and you could basically just run most 1E stuff in 2E without actually adjusting anything).</blockquote>

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