PlayStation: Jim Ryan clarifies his thinking on backward compatibility, in 2017 he expressed himself badly

PlayStation: Jim Ryan clarifies his thinking on backward compatibility, in 2017 he expressed himself badly

PlayStation

In a recent interview, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan wanted to clarify his thoughts on backwards compatibility. He had to do it because he said he was a bit tired of the fact that a sentence from 2017 is still being reproached after years. That sentence, for Ryan, was misinterpreted, and since he didn't want to "disrespect the PS1 and PS2 games !, which he called" ancient ".

Ryan made a mea culpa, saying that good part of the problem was that he misrepresented himself, not thinking about how those out-of-context phrases could have been interpreted.

"Who would want to play these games?" he told Time Ryan talking about Gran Turismo and Gran Tourism 2. "They look ancient." This is a strong phrase, which the PlayStation president said to just emphasize "how incredibly cool the PS4 version was. I certainly did not want to be disrespectful of our heritage. "

In all these years, moreover, the company has shown that it has changed its mind on backwards compatibility and with PlayStation 5 it has changed its policy in the race, first making the PS4 catalog almost completely backwards compatible and later trying to simplify the transition between one generation and another. Even deciding not to abandon the PS4 generation in favor of that PlayStation 5 with games like God of War 2 and GT7.

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Sony, Pressed For Answers, Offers None On Cyberpunk 2077’s PlayStation Return

Cyberpunk 2077

CDPR

We’re over the six month mark in terms of how long Cyberpunk 2077 has been banned from the PlayStation Store, with several huge patches and many hotfixes in the interim. And when Axios recently had an interview with Sony’s Jim Ryan, they asked the obvious question, what would it take for Cyberpunk 2077 to return to the store?


And again, Sony gave no answer.


Sony did comment on why they removed the game in the first place, however. Here’s Ryan:


“This was a tough decision for us to make, but ultimately, we had to act in the interests of the PlayStation Community, and not knowingly sell a game that might result in a bad experience for them.”


This frames the removal as about protecting consumers from a bad experience, a move that Microsoft never made, and given the state of the game at launch, was not an unreasonable decision at the time. This statement doesn’t address the narrative that the real problem Sony had with CDPR was when they started telling their players to request refunds directly through Sony. Sony didn’t do digital refunds, but were forced to make a special exception and system for Cyberpunk, and it wasn’t until this started happening that the game was removed entirely. So it might be a bit of both.

PS Store

Sony

What seems somewhat…less reasonable is the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 has now been banned from the store for over six months. Sales of the game have crashed, thanks in large part to CDPR not having access to the digital market of 115 million PS4 owners and X new million PS5 owners, as it’s all the same version of the game.


At this point, Cyberpunk 2077 has been patched enough times where it’s at least somewhat passable on PS4, and actually not bad at all on PS5, running the PS4 Pro version. The worst version of the game is probably the base Xbox One, where it has never stopped being for sale.


While I am not exactly sympathetic to CDPR for their Cyberpunk woes, the Sony situation is unprecedented and increasingly bizarre the longer this goes on. At this point, the answer seems like maybe the PS4 version of the game is never sold again, and Sony greenlights the PS5 version, coming later this year, instead. Sony saying absolutely nothing about what they’re looking for from CDPR, and CDPR only saying they’re in “talks” with Sony, as they’ve been saying for six months, appears to be going nowhere, but it’s hard to see Cyberpunk sales un-tanking unless this is resolved, especially with more patches and free DLC on the way.


I would love to know what’s going on behind the scenes here and why Sony is this entrenched in this position for so long. We’ll see how long this is going to last, but at this point, it could be forever.


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