Rumors have been flying for years that Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 5 console would be backwards compatible. Many have guessed that this new system would stretch all the way back to the PlayStation 1, giving players a chance to play some of their oldest games that have been collecting dust on a shelf for years.
It makes sense that users would want this. A lack of backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 3 was one of the biggest shortcomings of the PlayStation 4.
While there is no word yet on older systems, Sony has confirmed that the PlayStation 5 will be able to play PlayStation 4 games when it launches this holiday season…with a caveat.
Apparently, much like Microsoft’s current backwards compatibility for the Xbox One, the PS5’s ability to play PlayStation 4 games will be limited only to certain titles.
Hideaki Nishina said on the official PlayStation blog that he hopes that the majority of games released on PlayStation 4 will be playable on the PlayStation 5. Mike Cerny reported back in March during a system spec deep dive that they expect nearly all of the top 100 PlayStation 4 games to be playable at launch.
So far we’ve been getting a lot of hopes and expectations, with nothing concrete. Of course, that’s not to say that the titles compatible with the PlayStation 5 will be static. When Microsoft rolled out backwards compatibility for the Xbox One, it was only a select number of titles at first. Then, steadily, the company began to expand on that list, adapting more and more Xbox and Xbox 360 games for the next generation console.
It was confirmed last month that games submitted for certification on the PlayStation 4 after July of this year would have to be compatible with the PlayStation 5. Of course, this doesn’t mean that games releasing in that month will be confirmed as backwards compatible. Rather, this rule speaks to games currently under development applying for a PS4 release in the future.
The official PlayStation blog also confirmed that backward compatible titles that run on the PlayStation 5 will do so at a boosted frequency. According to the blog, the titles will “benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions.”
There has also been no word from Sony on whether PlayStation 4 games purchased digitally would be available to play on the PlayStation 5, so there’s still a lot to learn about this new console before it is released for the 2020 holiday season.
