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PlayStation 5 Backwards Compatibility Only Limited To PS4 Library, Launching with ‘Top 100 Games’

Yesterday, Sony announced that the company will be hosting a press conference to disclose new information on the upcoming PlayStation 5 to discuss the technological architecture of the approaching console and share the new capabilities that it can achieve in contrast to preceding hardware. So burning questions regarding the system’s first-party lineup and such will have to be on hold for a little longer.

However, in light on the discussion of supported games, Sony did reveal that there will finally be backwards compatibility for the newest iteration of PlayStation. Lead System Architect Mark Cerny shares that the approaching console will support the feature for only PlayStation 4.

Cerny goes to explain that unlike previous PlayStation models that utilize the chip set of the prior console to achieve backwards compatibility, the PlayStation 5 would instead interpret a new way to process older software and still remain effective when the hardware continues to evolve. This new approach to the feature is urged to be more lasting in contrast to the PlayStation 3.

Even as the technology evolves, the logic and feature set that PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro titles rely on is still available in backwards compatibility modes. One advantage of this strategy is that once backwards compatibility is in the console, it’s in – if not as is a cost down will remove backwards compatibility like it did on PlayStation 3.

In the presentation, Cerny then goes on to clarify that the team is working to incorporate the ‘Top 100 games’ based on the popularity of time played for PlayStation 4. Adding on, each title will have to be implemented for backwards compatibility independently as these games will receive boosted enhancements and require more testing. Cerny states that Sony is expecting “almost all of them to be playable at launch.”

Elsewhere, PlayStation Blog later on disclosed that the initial 100 games that will arrive at launch is not a fixed number and more to be added at a later time. “We recently took a look at the top 100 PS4 titles as ranked by play time, and we’re expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PS5. With more than 4000 games published on PS4, we will continue the testing process and expand backwards compatibility coverage over time.

While PlayStation 4-released games have been confirmed for backwards compatibility, support has yet to be mentioned for previous generations like PlayStation 3 and prior. This reveal contradicts reports that surfaced at the beginning of the year which now looks to have mislead many fans that have anticipated the entire PlayStation lifespan library to be supported for the PlayStation 5.

Which PlayStation 4 game do you hope to be playable on the new hardware?

PlayStation 5 is slated to release later on in 2020.

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