Sony may have 'won' this year's E3 with its triple whammy to the nostalgia glands, but Microsoft still made some big waves of its own with the announcement that Xbox One will now offer backwards comptatibility on certain Xbox 360 games. In the latest issue of Edge, the team caught up with Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's worldwide studios, to discuss what Sony makes of its rivals latest reveal.
"I was very surprised. It must have taken lots of effort for them to realise the backwards compatibility, because the Xbox 360 and Xbox One use very different kinds of architecture," muses Shu. "And I’m very curious. They showed a very short list of titles that work, and doing software emulation means you have to work title by title. So I’m curious to see what kind of games will be included in those 100 games that they say will be compatible by the end of the year."
Despite doing something of a u-turn following Microsoft's original stance on the matter of Xbox 360 games working with Xbox One, the new support for backwards compatibility has gone down a treat with fans. Could we see a similar setup with PS4 and PS3's substantial back catalogue? "We don’t have backwards compatibility with PS4. With PS Now you can play PS3 games on PS4, but the main purpose of PS Now is a network service," he comments. "By removing the requirement of games running on the console itself we can bring PlayStation games to multiple devices, including non-PlayStation devices. We just announced an alliance with Samsung in the US so people who purchase Samsung TVs can play PlayStation games on their TV. So that’s the main purpose, not to provide backwards compatibility."
The latest issue of Edge, with Dark Souls 3 on the cover, is out now. Download it here or subscribe to future issues.
