We learned this week that you'll be able play old Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One, a move that drew huge cheers from gamers at E3 2015.

Fans weren't the only ones surprised by Microsoft's concession to offering backward compatibility. Shuhei Yoshida, the president of Sony's Worldwide Studios — the guy in charge of securing games for the PlayStation console — was shocked by the announcement, too.

Backward compatibility has been a highly desired feature for both Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One. There are less than 200 games available for each of those consoles, compared to the 1,000-plus games available for those consoles' predecessors. More games to play means happier gamers.

Yoshida told Eurogamer that he "didn't think [backward compatibility] was possible" and that Microsoft must have put "lots of engineering effort" into making it work.

Unlike previous generation consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360, which used custom CPUs and GPUs, the guts of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have x86 PC-like architectures. The two are completely different animals. PC-like architectures let developers easily program on their PC development kits and bring them to the new consoles without needing to downgrade and optimize their software as much to run on punier hardware.

Adding Xbox 360 games support to Xbox One was definitely no easy feat for Microsoft. The company is using pure software emulation for the feature; in other words, the Xbox One will use software to replicate the Xbox 360's hardware.

As anyone who runs Windows through software emulation inside of Mac OS X can tell you, the function is very taxing on the CPU and GPU. More often than not, emulating hardware with software is never as glitch-free and smooth as running it natively.

While there will only be around 100 Xbox 360 games playable on the Xbox One at launch, Microsoft says it's working on adding many more to that list. It's just a matter of working with game publishers to get clearance.

So the question was on the tip of many tongues at E3: What would Sony's response be? The PS4 is more powerful than the Xbox One, so would Sony counter Microsoft's backward compatibility with the ability to play old PS3 games?

Yoshida says it's unlikely. "It's going to be super challenging to do so… but we have no plans."

Instead, Sony is taking a different approach: streaming. PlayStation Now streams a limited library of PS3 games to the PS4 for $20 (one month) or $45 (three months). Neither is cheap, especially if you already own a stockpile of PS3 games and don't want to shell out for the mere ability to play them.

PS Now is a shit idea. As soon as it flops they'll make it backwards compatible.

PlayStation Now is an amazing idea. The problem is it's done so poorly. It's way too expensive and there aren't nearly enough games included in it.

So that makes it a shit idea xD

Streaming games is not something that should become a thing. That just leads to everyone renting games and constantly paying money to play one game.

I'm fine without backwards comaptibility. They should be looking forwards not backwards.

PSNow is just another version of PSPlus, except this time you're just playing the older games. You're essentially renting the games as long as you can afford to. That's one of the downsides of the Playstation.

^^ No reason why they can't do both.

Also, I love how Yoshida - a Sony president - gives Microsoft more credit than Chilly and Maestro do.

I don't know why they would commit huge amounts of man power, money and time to bring in backwards comaptibility. Just seems ridiculous. The old consoles are still supported anyway.

Because it's a useful feature? Some people don't like having to spend a lot of money to buy a PS3 when they supposedly have a much better system in PS4. Why not make it backwards compatible so that it's possible to play the thousand+ games from the PS3 library? It's a useful feature.

My 360 red ringed on me. I don't need to give Microsoft any credit

Seriously, I don't understand why consoles are not backwards compatible. They just want to make the previous life cycle last as long as possible.

Anti-Mike wrote:

I don't know why they would commit huge amounts of man power, money and time to bring in backwards comaptibility. Just seems ridiculous. The old consoles are still supported anyway.

Eventually the PS3 wont be supported, so it works for the people that would want to play PS3 games if they ever sold the physical copies.

Well if a console isn't backwards compatible they could sell re-releases a few years down the line.

I really hope Sony gets on board with backwards compatibility. Playstation Now is fine on paper, but so awful in execution; I wouldn't spend that much money for a laggy stream of an old game that's already sitting on my shelf. I'd be more supportive of that program if they offered you the chance to stream games you already own for free, and charge you to stream older titles that you don't already own.

But I don't see why they don't view backwards compatibility as a loyalty program of sorts. A "Thank you for supporting Playstation through two generations of consoles over the last decade. Enjoy our new products, while continuing to enjoy what you've already invested lots of time and money in."