More details have been officially revealed about the Sony PlayStation 5.
Sony went into detail about the specs and features of the PlayStation 5. However, there was one feature that stood out, probably because of its controversial nature — the backwards compatibility of the Sony PlayStation 5.
PlayStation disappointed the fans when they removed the legacy support on the PS4. However, they made a workaround by putting PS3 (and older) games on PS Now. Unfortunately, it’s a subscription service that requires users to pay first before they can play.
That’s something that PlayStation is promising to fix on the next-gen console. Instead of paying for an online service, players can just throw in their PS4 games and play.
But it looks like accomplishing such a feature is not as easy as A-B-C.
During the presentation, PS5 Architect Lead Mark Cerny said that the console is only compatible with most of the top 100 PS4 games. These games were ranked based on user play time.
See also: PlayStation 5 vs Xbox Series X: Full Specs Comparison
That is still far from the ultimate goal of full backwards compatibility. For a perspective, a quick Google search shows that there are over 4,000 PS4 games available.
On the other hand, Microsoft has promised that the upcoming Xbox Series X will support all Xbox One games, plus even some Xbox and Xbox 360 titles.
Still, PlayStation 5’s legacy support is still better than PlayStation 4. Cerny did add that they are working on adding more legacy game support on the PS5.
According to the PS5 Architect, putting a PS4 chipset on the PS5 will be a very expensive move. That’s why you just can’t easily put a PS4 game in and play.
Instead, they designed the new AMD CPU on the PS5 to run in three different modes: native PS5 mode, legacy PS4, and legacy PS4 Pro modes.
The PlayStation 5‘s processor has a dramatic frequency boost, which older games may have trouble handling. That’s the reason why the company has to individually test each legacy games to make sure they will be compatible on the PS5. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee that it would work.
Ssince Sony is having a tough time even with the last generation, we’re expecting the worse with PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 games. And we’re saying it right now — the PS5 is probably incompatible with PS3, PS2, and PS1 disks. Chances are, you can only play PS1, PS2, and PS3 games on the PlayStation 5 via the PS Now subscription service.