Sony hasn’t explicitly stated how the PS5 intends to handle backwards compatibility for the previous generations of its hit PlayStation consoles.
However, third-party developer Ubisoft – the studio behind the Assassin’s Creed stable – seems to have lifted the lid on Sony’s plans for beyond compatibility with PS4 titles.
In a now-deleted post on the Ubisoft support site (via Eurogamer), the powerful studio said PS5 backwards compatibility would be available for “supported PlayStation 4 titles,” which we already knew. However, the post said it would “not be possible for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 or PlayStation games”.
Sony had previously promised the “the overwhelming majority of the 4000+ PS4 titles”, would be playable on PS5, while main man Mark Cerny also revealed “almost all” of the 100 top-ranked PS4 games would be available to play on the PlayStation 5.
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That would mean the limited options on the PlayStation Now subscription service would be the only option for diving into PS3 and PS2 games in the future.
The lack of support for the titles from the first three generations of PlayStation games wouldn’t be a surprise, but it would be an area where Sony would struggle to compete with Microsoft’s back-com offering with the Xbox Series X.
Microsoft has promised the Series X will be compatible with “thousands of games” at launch including support for all current Xbox One games (apart from those requiring the Kinect sensor) plus those Xbox 360 and original Xbox games that are already available through backwards compatibility. Some of those old games – even those from the OG Xbox will even benefit from HDR.
In a blog post back in May, the company explained: “In partnership with the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, Xbox Series X delivers a new, innovative HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games. As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game’s performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR.”
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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.
