Sony keeps saying they are interested in making the PlayStation 5 backwards compatible, but will it be? Now that we know that the PlayStation 5 is officially slated for a holiday 2020 release, more and more gamers are looking toward the next generation of gaming and they’ve got questions. President of SIEE, Jim Ryan, recently took to the PlayStation Blog to divulge a few juicy details about next-gen, though we can’t seem to get a clear answer on if they will actually be implementing a backwards compatibility program that players won’t have to pay for at launch.
Is PlayStation 5 Backwards Compatible?
At first glance, yes. Sony has stated numerous times that they realise now that the community wants to be able to revisit their favorite games without having to pay for them a second, third, or even fourth time. The topic of backwards compatibility has most extensively been about PlayStation 4 and PSVR titles, though Sony is aware of the high nostalgic factor that retro games also offer.
Going BC also means that players won’t have to 1) buy the original game itself in digital form and 2) won’t have to splurge on digital remasters unless they wanted to. Though the topic of PlayStation 3, 2, and original games has come up, it seems that initially, PlayStation 4 and VR will be the primary focus for the initial push. Never fear though, because the Xbox backwards compatibility library continued to grow exponentially far beyond that feature’s launch. It makes sense then that the PlayStation’s version of the same feature could also do the same.
Though the goal for both Xbox and PlayStation is to have 100%, there’s a lot more that goes into this process than “BOOM, done.” Beyond technical capabilities, there are legal distrubution rights to be considered – something made even more muddied as certain franchises change hands.
To learn more about what the next generation of Sony has to offer, with or without PlayStation 5 backwards compatibility, you can check out our previous coverage here.
