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Sony releases clarification on PS5 backwards compatibility

After bringing some unclear statements to the PS5 spec reveal stream, Sony has now offered some clarification.

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Sony actually revealed that its next console would be backwards compatible almost a year ago. It was widely believed this would be limited to Playstation 4, since the older consoles were tailormade and proprietary tech from Sony aren't compatible and in need of advanced emulation.

But when Mark Cerny officially revealed new data of Playstation 5 this week, they weren't exactly communicated in the best possible way. It resulted in video game media reporting and interpreting what Cerny said in different ways:

"We're excited to confirm that the backwards compatibility features are working well. We recently took a look at the top 100 PS4 titles as ranked by playtime, and we're expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PS5."

This wasn't what people were hoping for, as everyone had assumed all Playstation 4 games would run, preferably with enhancements, but at the very least with no issues on Playstation 5. But fortunately, Sony have now tried to clear things up, and writes:

"UPDATE: A quick update on backward compatibility - With all of the amazing games in PS4's catalog, we've devoted significant efforts to enable our fans to play their favorites on PS5. We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5.

We're expecting backward compatible titles will run at a boosted frequency on PS5 so that they can benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions. We're currently evaluating games on a title-by-title basis to spot any issues that need adjustment from the original software developers.

In his presentation, Mark Cerny provided a snapshot into the Top 100 most-played PS4 titles, demonstrating how well our backward compatibility efforts are going. We have already tested hundreds of titles and are preparing to test thousands more as we move toward launch. We will provide updates on backward compatibility, along with much more PS5 news, in the months ahead. Stay tuned!"

It basically seems like most Playstation 4 games will work on Playstation 5, but not all of them. And the 100 games Cerny talked about were the ones being boosted by Playstation 5 much higher capacity. As they need to do this on a 'by title'-basis, they simply chose to go for the most popular games first.

Obviously, Sony promises to tell us more about the backwards compatibility in the upcoming months, so hopefully, we'll get to know which of the consoles games that will work on Playstation 5 and which of them that will be boosted. Stay tuned as we will get back to this when we hear more about it.

Sony releases clarification on PS5 backwards compatibility


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