Sony has confirmed the inevitable. The forthcoming PS5 will not support games from the original PlayStation, PS2, PS3 consoles.
We’ve known for a while that, while the next-gen system will support 99% of PS4 games through backward compatibility, there’ll be no love for the legacy generations dating back more than a quarter of a century.
In an interview with Japanese publication Famitsu, SEI CEO Jim Ryan said Sony could not “reach implementation of such compatibilities” when asked about legacy consoles.
He said (translated by Silicon Era): “We keep in mind the engineering specialised for the PS5, as we produced the device. In the midst of that, the PS4 already has 100 million players; we thought they ought to want to play PS4 titles on the PS5 as well indeed, so we included compatibility with the PS4. While implementing that, we also focused our efforts on taking in the high-speed SSD and the new controller DualSense at the same time. So, unfortunately, we couldn’t reach the implementation of such compatibilities.”
Related: Best PS4 games
What Ryan is essentially saying here is that Sony didn’t think it was worth the effort, saying Sony had prioritised the 100 million PS4 gamers out there, The decision over PS1, 2 and 3 titles is really no surprise at all, especially given a Ubisoft support page spilled the beans back in August.
PS5 is not backwards compatible with PS3/PS2/PS1 games, according to a Ubisoft supprot page https://t.co/j1wTcAApZ3 pic.twitter.com/hnbpndATPi
— Wario64 (@Wario64) August 31, 2020
The PS5 strategy is still a massive improvement on the PS4 release, which was the first console in the range that didn’t offer any backward compatibility support for disc-based games.
Sony is also bringing the best of the PS4 generation to PS Plus members who buy a PS5. The PlayStation Plus Collection features era-defining titles like God of War, The Last of Us, Mortal Kombat X, Battlefield 1 and many more and they’ll be available free to subscribers.
If you absolutely have to have those PS2 and PS3 games, at least, there’s always the PlayStation Now cloud-based streaming service that will be available on PS5. Otherwise, keep your old consoles folks. Because they ain’t making any more of them.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
