At its March 2020 PS5 technical spec reveal, Sony re-confirmed that the console will support backwards compatibility with PS4 games.
Is The PS5 Backwards Compatible?
However it will not support any other generation before it as that would prohibitively expensive for the PS5 to support it thanks to massively different architectures. Additionally, Sony has said that getting backwards compatibility to work requires individual development on a per title basis with Cerny quoted as saying that ‘almost all of the most popular’ PS4 titles are working on the PS5 via Boost mode to provide enhanced performance.
In terms of how they are judging which games make the cut, Cerny said that Sony engineers are testing the ‘top 100 PS4 games’ as dictated by playtime – with almost all of them working on PS5 flawlessly. While this means that a variety of super selling PS4 first-party exclusives, such as God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man will make the cut, lesser known titles such as Mount and Blade: Warband probably won’t get the fancy boost mode treatment.
That said, a statement from the Official PlayStation Blog has made it clear that just about all of the PS4 games that aren’t boosted, will still work as normal through PS5’s ability to natively emulate the PS4’s architecture. That means that your massive library of PS4 games will be playable on PS5 at day one. Happy days!
Further afield, it’s worth noting that the PS5 will only be backwards compatible with PS4 games. This means that if you were hoping to play PS3, PS2 and PS1 titles on the PS5, you’re pretty much out of luck.
As of right now, the only way to do so will be through Sony’s PlayStation Now game streaming service which plays host a variety of older generation PlayStation titles.
Ultimately then, whilst PS5 backwards compatibility isn’t quite what many of us hoped for, the fact remains that as with this current console generation, Sony’s strengths will undoubtedly lay with its first-party offering of exclusive PS5 titles. After all, when it comes down to playing Killzone 3 again or God of War 2 – the choice seems pretty clear.