As Kotaku previously reported, the PlayStation 5 will be able to play “99 per cent” of the PlayStation 4’s library. But what about PS3 games? Or PS2 and PS1 ones?
In an interview with Famitsu, PlayStation exec Jim Ryan was asked about PS4 compatibility as well as for the previous PlayStation consoles, going back to the PS1.
Ryan pointed out that backwards compatibility for the PS4 was something Sony had in mind while creating the new consoles, adding that among the 100 million PS4 players, there are people who will want to play PS4 games on their PS5s and therefore included PS4 backwards compatibility.
“When implementing this,” Ryan continued, “we also poured all our energy into introducing the high-speed SSD as well as the new Dual Sense controller. Because of this, unfortunately, we were unable to include further backwards compatibility.”
In August, a Ubisoft website appeared to indicate that the PlayStation 5 would only be backwards compatible with PlayStation 4 games.
As for the 1 per cent of PS4’s 4,000-game catalogue that cannot be played on the PS5, Kotaku reported earlier that Mark Cerny, the new console’s lead architect, pointed out that each game had to be hand-tested for next-gen functionality.
While the PS5 is Sony’s returned to backwards compatibility (the PS4 did not have the feature while the PS3 did), rival Microsoft has confirmed that “thousands of games” from the Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One libraries will work on Series X at launch.
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