Editor's note: Backward compatibility is an important feature for many gamers. It's important to me, too. I suspect the reason behind the decline of backward compatibility is so publishers can sell games that we already own in older formats. It's worked for music publishers. -Jason

Microsoft stopped adding Xbox backward-compatibility updates
to the Xbox 360, but this hasn't seemed to slow sales.

Gamers are used to backward compatibility in their consoles. It's been in video game consoles that are part of a company or brand lineage. Backward compatibility is a rewarding feature for consumers who've supported those lineages -- buy the newest console and you get to play your games from the previous one.

It's a win-win situation, honestly: Consumers don't have to take out their old consoles, and their investments in previous generations aren't discarded. For console manufacturers, backward compatibility has been a means to extend new life to the consoles that have come before, enabling them to continue to move software and hardware units of the previous console during -- and after -- the launch of new hardware.

The current generation of consoles, though, has been fairly quick to shed backward compatibility, partially or completely. The PlayStation 3 used to play PS1 and PS2 titles through hardware-based backward compatibility, but now it plays PS1 titles only through software emulation. Microsoft had been on a mission to make nearly every Xbox title playable on the Xbox 360, but they stopped. The Nintendo DS started off with a GBA slot, but Nintendo got rid of it in the newest DS model, the DSi.

Console manufacturers are now quick to dismiss the importance of backward compatibility. Overall, backward compatibility has taken a blow this generation, and its future as a feature is in question.

Is backward compatibility gone as a major console feature?

One essential point to this discussion is that backward compatibility is becoming very expensive for console manufacturers -- especially hardware-based backward compatibility, which gamers prefer.

Take the PlayStation3 -- as mentioned above, the console's 60GB launch unit played both PS1 and PS2 titles through hardware-based backward compatibility. This was one of the biggest draws of the console for early adopters. However, the hardware in the PS3 that enabled it to play PS1 and PS2 games was one of the biggest factors in its price, which was the primary obstacle for consumers. Ironically, one of the biggest draws of the PS3 was also one of its biggest liabilities -- only the removal of this hindrance would enable Sony to cut the price of the PS3.

Now, on one hand, Sony should've prepared a software-emulation solution in order to enable the PS3s without hardware-based backward compatibility to play PlayStation 2 titles. The PlayStation 2 is one of the best-selling consoles of all time, and it has plenty of loyal consumers. Consumers who are upset at Sony's removal of the feature aren't "in the wrong" (so to speak). After all, many consumers are just now able to afford to a PS3 at its new $299.99 price. If you read some of the complaints on gaming message boards, Sony's made a critical misstep by not creating a PS2 backward-compatibility solution.

Even new versions of existing consoles that have had their
backward-compatibility features removed are selling well.

However, if you look at the United Kingdom sales figures of the PS3 last week, PS3 sales are up 1,000 percent. Last week in Japan, consumers bought 150,052 PS3 Slim units in its first three days on sale -- compare that to the launch week of the PS3 in Japan, when a paltry-by-comparison 88,000 PS3s were sold after its first two days of availability.

Gamers weren't too fond of Microsoft's move to stop making additional Xbox titles compatible with the Xbox 360. That hasn't stopped the Xbox 360 from holding on to a strong second-place ranking throughout this console war. The DSi -- without a GBA slot to speak of -- had sold 6.68 million units worldwide as of June 2009. These sales figures are perhaps the most damning argument against the relevance of backward compatibility -- that the removal of the feature doesn't seem to impede sales at all.

There's another side to this argument, though. Keep in mind that the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, and the Nintendo DS started off with strong backward-compatibility features. The 60GB PS3 was a BC beast, Microsoft was hard at work on regularly updating the Xbox 360's backward-compatibility profiles, and Nintendo had a GBA slot on the DS. These consoles didn't start off without backward compatibility, and it took a while for the Big 3 to start removing BC features from their consoles.

At the very least, this means that backward compatibility is important to early adopters, who are critical to the console war. They form the crux of the install base, and the console manufacturer who builds the biggest install base fastest tends to fare well in, or win, the console war.

However, that only communicates that BC's only important as a feature to early adopters and that there's a point at which console manufacturers could stop including it, which certainly isn't fair to consumers who purchase a console later. But if backward compatibility is important only to early adopters, why should console manufacturers include this potentially expensive feature later on if it's not going to affect them negatively in sales?

The problem is that the video game industry is at a crossroads right now. Backward compatibility hasn't been too much of a problem to include in the past, but price and increasing complexities in hardware are making it more difficult to implement. The industry is on the verge of a potential transition to digital distribution, which has already proven to be a profitable platform for sales of older titles. The industry is also seeing rereleases of classic titles like God of War drawing high demand.

It seems like console makers have fewer and fewer reasons to include backward compatibility -- at least as an ongoing feature. Then again, the industry still sees a loud and vocal group of consumers who want their backward compatibility and don't want to see their investments from the previous generation fade away. These factors make the status of backward compatibility unclear, since no single solution exists that satisfies everyone.

Console manufacturers can't dismiss the importance of backward compatibility, but they can't be asked to withstand sometimes-significant financial losses, either. Consumers have the right to ask for backward compatibility, but console prices are also an issue for them, and hardware-based backward compatibility drives prices.

So, maybe there's a compromise to be had somewhere -- maybe there are software-based backward compatibility solutions to explore, or perhaps someone could create an USB peripheral that would enable backward compatibility.

The future of backward compatibility might be uncertain, but one thing is clear -- when it comes to the future of backward compatibility, looking backward at solutions of the past is no longer an option.