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Last week, Dark Souls scholar Lance McDonald tweeted about the PS5’s backward compatibility feature before removing it. Resetera captured the tweet.
“There has been some confusion about this in the past and I can clarify it now: the PlayStation 5 can run all PlayStation 4 games without whitelisting per game. Sony continues to test titles but the system will not stop you. to launch untested games. “
After its deletion, a subsequent tweet reportedly said, “I deleted a tweet out of respect for the platform owner, please feel free to interpret it as you see fit.” This has also been deleted.
If that’s true, that basically means you won’t run into any obstacles when playing a PS4 game on your PS5 – no “whitelisting” would mean you can try out any game and see how it plays. You may not have the same experience as the game as it runs on PS4 – but you won’t have to wait for Sony to add this game to a roster and give you permission to play it on PS5, if this tweet is correct.
That would be a good thing, and you’d expect it to be anyway. While solutions for backward compatibility with PlayStation consoles have varied over the years, this is how Sony has always done it from a gamer perspective. On PS2, you can play your PSone games. On PS Vita, you can play your PSP games. And on early PS3s, you could play PSone games and even most PS2 games, before Sony changed the hardware to cut costs.
Below, we’ll talk about what we know about the PS5’s backward compatibility feature so far, and explain what we think is right and wrong with Sony’s approach.
What do we know about PS5 backward compatibility?
What McDonald’s said in his deleted tweets essentially matches Sony’s slightly confusing discussion about the extent of the PS5’s ability to play PS4 games.
In March 2020, Sony’s Mark Cerny first discussed how backward compatibility works on PS5. Rather than putting the PS4 chipset in the PS5, it would instead “incorporate all the differences in logic from the previous console into the custom chips for the new console.”
This means that the PS5’s backwards compatibility feature will be present in every console and will not be removed later to reduce costs, as was the case with the PS3’s ability to play PS2 games. This decision instantly made the PS3 a less attractive console.
“Running PS4 and PS4 Pro titles at increased frequencies also added complexity,” Cerny said. “The boost is really huge this time around and some game codes can’t handle it. Testing needs to be done title by title. The results are great, though. We recently looked at the Top 100 PlayStation 4 titles. sorted by playing time, and we expect almost all of them to be playable at launch on PlayStation 5. “
In a follow-up blog post by Hideaki Nishino, vice president of planning and platform management, Sony expanded it to many more compatible games than the top 100. “With all the amazing games in the PS4 catalog , we have devoted considerable effort to enabling our fans to play their favorites on PS5. We believe that the overwhelming majority of the over 4,000 PS4 titles will be playable on PS5. “
Again, this largely matches what McDonald’s mentions above. Whitelisting would mean players would have to wait for individual matches
“In his presentation, Mark Cerny provided an overview of the Top 100 Most Played PS4 Titles, demonstrating how well our backward compatibility efforts are going,” Nishino also said.
“We have tested hundreds of titles already and are preparing to test thousands more as launch nears. We will be providing backward compatibility updates, along with many more new PS5s, in the months to come. come. Stay tuned! “
This is the best approach
A little more clarity from Sony on how backward compatibility works would be very helpful, but we’re fans of the approach. You can buy any PS4 game now with the confidence that it will likely work on PS5.
And since you can’t even pre-order the PS5 yet, we can’t blame Sony too much for the lack of information on the subject – plus it’s a situation that is likely to change over time, as more and more games are being tested. It’s likely that more details on backward compatibility will be revealed alongside other key hardware information, such as console dimensions, or even the release date and price.
Still: We’ve said it before, but it’s disappointing that Sony still sees PS Now as the only outlet for its old PlayStation titles. Aside from the PS4, there are some great games on PS3, PS2, and PSone that are basically lost in time, unless they’re so popular that they’re getting a remaster, or you’re a collector.
The selection of older games on PS Now is meager – and we don’t expect Sony to take Microsoft’s approach to trying to support the vast majority of games from its older consoles. Sony just doesn’t have to work that hard to impress gamers – and on top of that, support for PS4 games on PS5 will probably seem like enough for most gamers.
If nothing else, it’s cool that in the age of digital downloads there is real continuity between these PlayStation consoles. Sony seems to care a lot more about this now than it did when the PS4 was launched, and you might assume that Microsoft’s diligent approach to backward compatibility has been a factor in that evolution. On PS4, you couldn’t play any PS3 games, which means if you bought The Last of Us, Saints Row 4, or Arkham Origins in 2013, it would stay on your console for 7 years.
Hopefully, this is a sign that backward compatibility is becoming more standardized between the two console giants.
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