According to PlayStation's “The Road To PS5” video, which was live-streamed on Wednesday, the lead system architect Mark Cerny said Sony’s next-generation console will be backward compatible with around 100 games from the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro. Almost all the games that have the highest playtime will be backward compatible on the PlayStation 5 when it comes out later this year.
Cerny stated that some of the games can’t handle the boosted frequencies on the PlayStation 5 and that the boost is massive, so they have to test each game on a title-by-title basis, and that testing is going well. You will be able to save space on your PlayStation 5 by running older games from external storage. According to Digital Foundry “It won't be as fast as booting from the internal SSD, but it'll free up space for the next-gen titles that are going to need it. Once the limit is hit, we suspect that games can be backed up to standard hard drives, but there is an option to boost SSD storage.”
Sony hasn’t confirmed anything for the backward compatibility of games older than PlayStation 4, such as PlayStation 3 and older generation consoles. It is known that the system architecture was really expensive and they couldn’t implement it for the PlayStation 4 launch.
With the addition of ray tracing in the new PlayStation 5, it will be an interesting experience to see what changes are made to older games to make them look more visually impressive. The system is said to run at 10.28 Teraflops, which is a step up towards higher end modern PC systems, and is more than twice as powerful as the PS4 Pro and almost ten times as powerful as an original PS4.
So, what are your thoughts on the new PlayStation 5 launch details and features? Are you excited by the potential of consoles catching up to PC? Personally, I think it’s a great step forward for gaming, but Sony has to bring in more cross-play titles and allow us to upgrade the console to maintain current system requirements. Whatever your thoughts may be, let us know in the comments below.
