Sony Clarifies PS5 Backward Compatibility

Earlier this week, Sony hosted a deep dive into some of the PlayStation 5's hardware. During that presentation, PS5 lead architect Mark Cerny touched on the topic of backward compatibility, but what he had to say didn't leave people feeling very confident that backward compatibility was going to be a priority for Sony in the next generation. Today, Sony clarified things, delivering some good news for those who want to bring their PS4 game libraries forward as they move to the PlayStation 5.

First, let's dive into what Cerny initially said during his deep dive. When discussing backward compatibility, Cerny said that nearly all of the top 100 PlayStation 4 games (determined by looking at total playtime across the PS4 user base) would be playable on PlayStation 5 at launch. That left potential PS5 buyers wondering if Sony was going to leave backward compatibility at those top 100 games or if it was going to make more games backward compatible over time.

Good news: it's the latter. In an updated post on the PlayStation Blog, Sony senior vice president of platform planning & management Hideaki Nishino clarified a few things, saying that Sony has "devoted significant efforts" toward making sure that people can play their favorite PS4 games on PlayStation 5. "We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5."

Nishino went on to say that Sony is currently in the process of evaluating PS4 games on a "title-by-title basis to spot any issues that need adjustment from the original software developers." Further, Nishino said that Cerny's announcement concerning the top 100 PS4 games was only supposed to serve as a demonstration of "how well our backward compatibility efforts are going."

Nishino ends his update by saying that Sony has already tested "hundreds" of PS4 titles and plans to test "thousands more" as we move toward launch. Sony will give an update on backward compatibility in the next few months, so we'll keep an eye out for that and let you know when there's more information out there.