PlayStation 5 backward-compatibility aims to include most PlayStation 4 games

Sony has clarified that the PlayStation 5’s backward compatibility will eventually work for most PlayStation 4 games after the presentation on the upcoming console’s technical specifications resulted in some confusion over the feature.

PlayStation 5 lead system architect Mark Cerny recently gave a glimpse into the highly anticipated console in a pre-recorded presentation that was originally meant for this year’s Game Developers Conference.  In addition to the console’s technical details, Cerny said that it will be backward compatible with nearly all of the 100 most-played games on the PlayStation 4 upon launch.

While backward compatibility is a welcome addition to the PlayStation 5, there were concerns that the feature would be limited to a small percentage of the PlayStation 4 library. However, an update on the PlayStation Blog post for Cerny’s presentation further explained how backward compatibility will work on the upcoming console.

PlayStation 5 will run most PlayStation 4 games

“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,” according to the update on the blog post.

The update said that Cerny’s snapshot of backward compatibility with the 100 most-played PlayStation 4 games showed the efforts so far for the feature, but hundreds of other PlayStation 4 games have already been tested, with thousands more in the pipeline. Games are said to be undergoing evaluation on a title-by-title basis to check for any issues once run on the PlayStation 5.

This is a much-needed clarification for current PlayStation 4 owners who want to keep playing their libraries on the PlayStation 5. While we will have to wait and see how many PlayStation 4 games the PlayStation 5 will be able to run at launch, it appears that Sony is hard at work on getting that percentage as high as possible.

The explanation of backward compatibility on the PlayStation 5, however, does not address rumors that the new console will not only play PlayStation 4 games, but also titles for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and original PlayStation. It remains to be seen if the feature will indeed work with all generations of the console.

The PlayStation 5 is set to launch in the holiday season of 2020 when it will go head to head with the Xbox Series X.