PlayStation Plus Exclusive Feature is a Joke, Xbox Backwards Compatibility Reigns Supreme

PlayStation Plus Premium is a bit of a joke, as one of its core features pails in comparison to what Xbox offers by default.

I’m very passionate about game preservation. So many titles are falling into obscurity and that’s someone’s hard work simply wasting away for no good reason.

Companies like PlayStation and Xbox have done their part to combat this by re-releasing some of the standout titles either as digital purchases or as rentable titles, like PlayStation does with PlayStation Plus Premium.

While PS1 games can often be bought outright PS2 games onwards usually fall under its subscription service’s most expensive tier, and I hate it.

If I want to play a classic like God of War (2005), or something more here-and-now like Fallout: New Vegas I can’t simply install and play them on my PlayStation 5. I have to subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium and cloud-stream them instead. We shouldn’t have to!

Fans have done the work and revealed the console is more than capable of running PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 games with relative ease, so shackling them to a subscription service simply feels mean, or greedy, to me.

Xbox isn’t perfect by any means, but it at least has an extensive library of backwards compatible games, all of which are accessible without Xbox Game Pass too.

I’ve been playing Fallout: New Vegas on my Series X and while it’s the original Xbox 360 version it runs fine, or as well as you’d expect for Obsidian’s choppy Fallout game that is.

Bethesda

Same with Batman: Arkham Origins which I played over Christmas.

Unfortunately you can’t purchase this one through Xbox’s digital store anymore but I got a physical copy for less than £5 and played it that way instead. Even some of my OG Xbox discs work, it’s marvellous.

Compared to the hassle of having to pay a fortune and cloud-stream games on my PlayStation 5, I'm baffled that anyone subscribes to PlayStation Plus’ highest tier at all.

Rumour has it that the PlayStation 6 is going to be better at this, and will support not just PlayStation 5 games, but PlayStation 4 and even PlayStation 3 discs too.

That could all be rubbish until Sony officially confirms, but it’d be a step in the right direction for sure.

It makes me angry that there’s such a stigma around emulation, when it’s the easiest and most cost-effective way to play the games these companies are leaving behind.

We can do better.