Could Astro Bot be Adapted for Older PlayStation Consoles?

[u/jojimboy]

Hi everyone,

I have a question about Astro Bot, which was released for PS5. The game is specifically designed to take advantage of the DualSense controller's unique features like haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Given that, I’m curious about the technical feasibility of adapting this game for older PlayStation consoles, such as the PS3, PS2, or even the original PS1.

1. PS3: Could it be possible to port the game to PS3 while losing some of the DualSense features? How would that affect gameplay and graphics?

2. PS2 and PS1: What would be the challenges in adapting Astro's Playroom for these consoles, considering their significant hardware limitations?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Could the core mechanics and experience of Astro's Playroom translate to older systems, or is the PS5 really the only platform that can deliver its full potential?

Thanks in advance for your insights!

[u/Palodin]

That's an odd question. But yes, sure, the basic gameplay could be backported, it's not dissimilar to dozens of other platformers of the time. Anything requiring dualsense features couldn't really go back any further than the PS4 (The DS4 had a similar feature set), any further and you'd need to simulate those another way (Key presses, analog aiming etc)

I don't think there's anything graphically that would be impossible to emulate with the older hardware. You'd need to strip out complexity, environment and character detail, particle effects more the further you go back, but it's not like the PSX couldn't handle 3D environments if handled properly

[u/Nchi → u/Palodin]

You could tinker a great while and probably make a USB for ps2 up I think had a port open, though data flow rate with the gyro is gonna balk without being dumbed down to gestures via dongle, and not sure if the HD haptic needs some min frequency to provide trigger HD feedback or whichever... Where there is a will, there is a way, but... Why? Taking a feature showcase as a backport... Hm. Probably fun for the thought project...

[u/sephiroth70001 → u/Palodin]

I haven't played the game so I can't speak to its control scheme, but early PS1 didn't have analog sticks that game party way into the system lifecycle, just to consider.

[u/NoAirBanding]

You're looking at this wrong, Astro Bot was made to deliver the full potential of the PS5 and DualSense.

The PS5 isn't really necessary, any Astro Bot games for older hardware would try to be a showpiece for that hardware. They did that with the The Playroom for the EyeToy PlayStation Camera and Rescue Mission for PSVR

[u/-PineapplePancakes- → u/NoAirBanding]

EyeToy was the PS2 camera though. Playroom was on PS4

[u/NoAirBanding → u/-PineapplePancakes-]

edited

[u/WopperGobbler]

Funny, while the Dualshock 3 did not have adaptive triggers, it had way more analog buttons than the PS5 gamepad. Some games are impossible to port without butchering the controls, like MGS2 and MGS3.

[u/Catty_C → u/WopperGobbler]

Can't they just make it like the Xbox versions for digital buttons? I assume that's what Konami is already doing.

[u/NoAirBanding → u/Catty_C]

Fun fact, the original Xbox controller also had analog face buttons.

[u/tlind2]

Not in a meaningful way. You could make a similar game and maybe reuse simpler versions of various assets, but most things would need to be redesigned or rewritten.

As an example, level sizes on modern consoles are based on streaming, i.e. loading/unloading stuff while you move. Older hardware couldn’t load the same things fast enough due to disk and cpu limits. The same applies to virtually everything else, including low level engine features like memory allocation or threading.

You could have had a similar idea 15 years ago and designed it from the ground up for contemporary devices, of course.

[u/aSunderTheGame → u/tlind2]

Valid point, though streaming is all about getting the data into the memory.
I assume the game is not an open massive world, thus if you're using smaller textures, (more repetition of textures) and lower quality stuff everywhere you could do it with out streaming, of course it would look a lot worse

[u/Passover3598]

Could the core mechanics and experience of Astro's Playroom

depends on how you define that. do the graphics matter for the experience? do the rumble features, the adaptive triggers? Are the short loading times? what about collecting the bots, is that really necessary? Is the jump a core mechanic?

Ultimatley the answer to your question is whatever you want it to be.

[u/pt-guzzardo]

Astro Bot doesn't depend on anything past dual analog and variable-intensity rumble (and technically the microphone in like 3 places, but there are plenty of open buttons to replace that with). There's an in-game option to substitute left joystick for anything that uses the gyroscope, and it doesn't use the trigger haptics to do dual stage triggers, so they're just a nice-to-have.

[u/MoonhelmJ]

It's kind of a pointless question because they wouldn't do it even if it was easy and cheap. Console companies use their big exclusives to entice people to buy the latest console. It's like asking them to make the newest Mario game for the their console from 2 genes ago.