Even though I would like it, I absolutely did not expect it to happen, so there's no way I can be disappointed.

There's just no way they would have been able to release a competitively priced PS5 that could play all the way back to the PS1. At most I would have guessed as much as the PS3, but even that seemed iffy, given the vastly different architecture.

This is one area where Microsoft has an inherent advantage, because their system architecture hasn't gone through such drastic changes over the years.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at with it, too.

I'm perhaps a bit of an oddball in that there are a few PS1/PS2 games that I go back and play with some frequency, particularly the King's Field games (From Software's first titles). I tend to play at least one of them every year or so. And when I played King's Field: The Ancient City a month or two ago, I had some technical issues that tend to suggest failing hardware. So it would be really wonderful if I didn't have to worry about finding another PS2 (or one of the older backward compatible PS3s).

I don't expect PS5 to have it based on what we've seen so far

but if it doesn't, I'm out on Sony hardware I think. I realize I'm an edge case, but it's that important to me.

I've got a lot of PS3 Digital titles more or less held hostage on old hardware, games that I bought with the assumption that PS4 would have BC

I'm sick of endlessly rebuying the same games, I'll just stick to PC where I can my digital purchases seem to last longer. Especially if Sony 1st party stuff now comes there. I can be patient

I have 0 nostalgia for anything before the PS4, as my PS2 was purchased towards the end of that gen and mostly just so I would stop using a friend's to play FFX. Even after having it, I didn't play that much of it, and spent more console time on the Gamecube or original Xbox. (most of my youth was spent playing the Xbox port of Morrowind, which we picked up a disk-less Xbox One strictly to play that using Microsoft's Backwards Compatibility, and I have no regrets) PS4 era is where it will matter more to me, as I happily switched to mostly digital purchases and being able to run that stuff on a PS5 will take away some of the annoyances of having to keep an old console hooked up, or digging it out of a box to play X, so on and so forth.

I don't own any physical media anymore besides a loose copy of Tony Hawk 1 somewhere and a couple random SNES carts from my ill-fated attempt to re-buy my favorite childhood games a half-decade ago so it doesn't really concern me. I did have a brief, "aw man, really?" moment before remembering I already haven't bought the myriad of remasters of games from the PS1 and PS2 era I'd already paid for and never played on PS3 for my PS4 so I really don't need it.

The nostalgic in me wants to say I'll someday play those old games, but I've been stuck on the middle third of the first island of GTA III for nearly 2 years now and I still need to watch The Plot Against America, The Boys, First Cow and Lovecraft Country so...no, I don't really need those old games as much as my Forever Young brain would like to convince myself I do.

This. I'm already getting it anyway because it'll have the 4's library. The others are just a bonus.

Ironically through years of being pretty bad at this Sony has lowered my expectations to the point where I wouldn't be surprised or all that disappointed as it would be expected of them. Now that Microsoft has gone pretty hard down that rabbit hole I would be really shocked if they somehow weren't able to carry over their entire existing back-compat library - funny how you can have different standards based on past performance.

Somewhat. It's more a convenience thing of being able to put my old consoles away. And maybe getting performance boosts along the way.

I'm not surprised at this, just disappointed. Full backwards compatibility should be a standard feature now, not a bonus. Sony has 25 years worth of old games they could continue to sell digitally so it's definitely worth it, there's a market for old games out there, and I have PS2 and PS3 games I'd like to play hassle free.

As always, though, hobbyists will do it way better than Sony themselves, so emulation will have to do until someone can make an FPGA PS2.

Not quite as drastic, but Xbox went from x86 to PowerPC to x86 again. Writing an emulation layer for two generations of Xbox wasn't easy, it was just something they chose to do. Sony doesn't see the value in it, so they aren't going to put in the work.

Yeah. Back when rumors about it started floating around I got attached to the idea. The possibility of being to pick up some favorite and/or missed gems from the PS1 and 2 era specifically and easily share the experience with friends through streaming became the driving point to my interest in the PS5, so it not happening is a pretty large bummer. My PS3 broke recently too, and I still have a bunch of those games laying around, 1 or 2 that I might want to go back to.

It won't sway my purchase but it will be a massive hearts and minds move for Sony. I think people are willing it to be true because of how powerful a statement it will be and I totally agree. But everything from them limiting their scope to PS4 and Jim Ryan's dismissive statements regarding BC in the past suggests it's not happening. Hope springs eternal though so here's to hoping it's there.

I think Sony is just being lazy. 7 years into the PS5/seriesX generation I don’t think we are going to be lamenting the lack of power these things have. The top 10 games are not going to be graphical beast whereas the 500 honorable mentions were not. Good games just don’t follow the graphical calculus like that. I’d take less power and a complete catalogue over what is the latest and greatest, until it’s not (which has been the status quo for everybody but Nintendo).

I just signed up for a year of gamepass mainly because I can’t be bothered to care about downloading 50+ GB files or caring about hard drive space ever again. Those things are vestiges of the XboxOne/PS4 era. If I can’t download and play a game in the time it takes to make a MGSIV sandwich then I just don’t care anymore. If I have to Sophie’s choice every game on my hardrive then what’s the point and the fun starts turning into a job.

A fully backwards compatible disc based PS5 would mean I could get away from playing games in a subscription model or on some marketing schedule. I could just play. As it stands now my collection of Xbox games is my own. I can write reviews for Armed and Dangerous or Red Faction 2 without feeling like a slave to a original Xbox system that might croak. The free games with gold and gamepass games will let me check stuff out on a whim and fall in love kind of like I am doing with outerwild. Sony just doesn’t see the value in me playing Soul Reaver and then me digitally buying up and down their ladder of that serie’s entire offering in a couple clicks and $50 later. It’s another case of accounting running the games division.

I do like the zeitgeist on the latest releases but with monetization the way it is I’d rather look deeper into a catalogue than ahead. My only hope for Xbox is that they write achievements into original Xbox games or make Kinect games backwards compatible too. There’s more mystery, for me, in the games I sat in bookstores reading about for 100s of hours and never touched than the remakes, rehashes, and rote (for aliteration purposes) by committee of today.

I seems insane to me that some people expect it, or will be disappointed if you can't pop a PS2 disk into the PS5 and play. It would definitely be a neat feature but it's so far out of the realm of things I'd expect from a new console.

I cannot stress how much I love popping in my old KotOR disc into my One X and having it play in 4K. It’s a genuinely impressive feature of the Xbox ecosystem.

Is it a bummer that Sony can’t do the same? Absolutely, but I keep my old consoles and so I’ve got no issues playing on my PS3 and PS2 (both can run PS1 games). But hey, it would be cool at some point if Sony spins up a back compat team and gets serious about emulation on the very powerful PS5.

@doombot13 said:

I am 100% with you on this. And I doubt there is any normal consumer that expects it either. These systems are already going to cost quite a bit in the middle of a bad economy. There is no reason to drive up cost(yes, it would drive up the cost) for a feature that a very small percentage of the userbase will use.

@plan6: I don’t think most reasonable people are demanding hardware based back compat, but rather an emulator based solution that would not change the hardware of the PS5. Microsoft has done it through a dedicated team and it doesn’t seem to be hurting their bottom line. It would be nice if Sony did the same. I don’t think that’s an “insane” expectation.

@navster15: cost is meaningless if it’s going to be sold out until 2021. Do you think the PS4 backwards compatible stuff is going to be day 1? I’ll concede that nobody cares about pre-PS4 stuff but your average joe is going to want to trade in their PS4 stuff for as much value as possible. Delayed promises on backwards compatibility will piss people off.

@fourthline: I’m not sure what aspect of what I wrote you have issue with. I suppose you want a hardware based solution I guess? In that aspect the above posters are correct. Selling a ~$1000 PS5 that fits the guts of all previous PlayStations would give Microsoft a massive price advantage for limited gain.

And yes, I expect PS4 compatibility day one because that’s being baked into the hardware.

Like many have already said, it would be nice to have the backwards compatibility so that I could put my old consoles away, but it’s not a big deal to me if it doesn’t.

@navster15: they’ve been cagey about what games will be backwards compatible. If it’s so hardware based as you claim then they all should be. I feel like you’ll defend any move they make. You know by not including a controller they are giving choice to people that want a PS5 in the bedroom and living room. Who is Sony to say what color controller you have to get. For $5 you can upgrade your PS4 games to PS5 seems fair would I rather have nothing. PS plus PS4 and Ps plus PS5 are different services and I shouldn’t expect them to be the same. Etc.

@navster15 said:

That still costs money. The emulation and systems that allow it does not update itself for free. It will still be someone's job to make that work for all PS1, 2 and 3 games consistently. I understand that emulation has been free for folks on PC for a long time, but its not a commercial product. There are different expectations and concerns. One being "Yo, this shit has to work all the time and not be a nightmare for people to use."

@plan6: Forgive me for not hearing the cries of poverty from the megacorp. The point of free market competition in the console space is to move all market players forward. Sony dragged Nintendo away from the dated cartridge format with the success of the PS1, Microsoft dragged Sony into internet play with the success of Xbox Live, and so on an so forth. It’s not unreasonable for me as a customer to tell Sony that hey, Microsoft is doing this thing, you should probably do that as well. I’m not asking for perfect compatibility out of the gate, but boy would it be nice to be able to play MGS4 without hooking up my PS3.

@fourthline: I honestly don’t understand your position here. Look, if Sony launches PS5 and I can’t play my existing copy of NBA 2K21 or Doom Eternal, that’s going to be a problem when the Series X can do it. Sony may not have total back compat out of the gate, but the pressure is there for them to have some sort of solution at launch.

I don't expect it to happen, but it'd be an immense value add for me that would encourage me to pick up the system. I'll be considering a PS5 in 2023 when we get the Pro model at which time I'll also be needing to build a new PC. Right now, the value proposition with the system is such that I'd expect to pass come 2023; a handful of exlusives is not going to be enough for me to justify the purchase.

Like what? I don't care about Sony, I care about my bank account. Those costs will be passed on to us. Sony isn't going to take that hit on every system. Like what world are you living in where that stuff will be free? Microsoft is doing the backward compatibility stuff because they are building out game pass and Xcloud, which will cost money.

Also, on a side note, emulation of hardware as a commercial product is the wild west of IP law. Its been free because no one tried to make money on it. KOTR works the current Xbox because EA didn't say "Nah, we are going to sell a remaster of that, so that can't be for free." That won't stay that way forever.

That's where I'm at with it as well. I'm almost surprised to see more than one other person echoing this sentiment on here because it's always seemed like I'm very much an outlier in my opinion about backwards compatibility. It's a nice to have for sure, but I think it's unreasonable to expect it, even one generation, unless the architectures are similar enough that it can be done without driving up the cost of what is already going to be an expensive piece of hardware. And to me, the idea that they should include backwards compatibility all the way back to the PS1 is, frankly, ludicrous. I also seriously question how many people would actually use the feature on a consistent basis (not many, if I had to guess).

I was trying to think, was it PS1 games being playable on the PS2 that started the whole backwards compatibility train to begin with? I feel like until that point it was just accepted that when a new console came along, you moved on to a new generation of games, and if you wanted to play the older ones you used the older system. Simpler times!

Joining the "It'd be nice, but I can live without it" gang. I only get that random urge to play some old console game like once or twice in a year and I doubt that's going to change anytime soon, so I can live without it.

@plan6: I completely forgot when the Xbox One’s price went up because of emulation added post launch. But that could be faulty memory. Like I said, Microsoft did it, why can’t Sony?

@navster15: Microsoft, the services company that is developing a cloud gaming service where they would like tons of games to run similar hardware? The company that owns the most use PC operating system(which make bank on) and used that as the foundation for all of the consoles infrastructure every time? The company that shit itself when launching this console generation and has been playing catch-up ever since? Gee, I wonder why this service is free and easier for Microsoft?

Rather assuming that everyone can do what Microsoft is doing for free, you should be asking why Microsoft has decided to throw money at this feature and not charge for it.

I believe that's around the time it started, but I certainly wouldn't say it was just accepted. I think parents buying a SNES and being told none of the games they'd bought up until that point would work anymore, was a tough pill to swallow. Video games are kind of the only media that completely reset every seven years, so I get the frustration.

I didn't expect it, but if one of these consoles offered full backwards compatibility of their entire backlog (not just publisher approved games), that would definitely be enough to sell me on one over the other. Not having backwards compatibility is a bummer, but it's the status quo right now, so I guess I don't really expect at the level I want it. What's going to be more frustrating is being asked to buy War of the Monsters a fourth time because even their digital versions aren't going to be backwards compatible.

Not at all. I think going back any further than the last generation is a waste of time an resources.

We're in a very weird place now because Microsoft is treating their console more like the PC in terms of backwards compatibility. Like when you upgrade your new graphics card, you can start up an old game at ultra settings and see what it looks like. I'm excited to see what forza horizon 4 and gears 5 look like on new hardware.

I think it was stated in the ps5 cerny talk that the ps5 will down lock to run the ps4 version of games(if there is no pro patch) and ps4 pro games. So, I doubt there will be a performance boost on those titles. I really don't think that Sony is putting in the work. I think this will look bad on the company if they sell ps5 remasters of ps4 games(I don't know if they will do this).

I kind of find the demons souls remake kind of funny, since, on the series x, you can play dark souls 2 and 3, dark souls remaster(4k 60). Like, you're getting a remake of halo 1 or something but halo 2 and 3 are on other platforms as well running really well. Just sounds strange to me.

I'm fairly confident that it won't so I wouldn't be disappointed since I wouldn't be surprised in the first place (then by the second installment they will get rid of that feature like they did with the ps3). They will do only the biggest ps4 hits just to market that they do it. I mean they "Believe in generations", aka they believe in re-selling the "hd remaster" over and over lol.

I'm getting a new console for new games.
It won't mean much to me if it's backwards compatible or not.

@plan6: "you should be asking why Microsoft has decided to throw money at this feature and not charge for it"

Because their consoles focus on DirectX it's much easier for them to do BC. It's not some nefarious plot for world domination. They have always focused on backwards compatibility (market pretty much demanded it on PCs), so their planning is paying off.

would be nice if the ps5 played all my ps4 games in my digital library with better performance. i really don't need to play ps1-3 games again.

And like, Sony already have in-house PS1 and PS2 emulators. How are people crying it will "drive up costs"? The second they charge anything for their customers to play something on PS1/2/3/4 they deserve for the market to chew them out.

@plan6: Sony doesn’t have services with PS Plus and PS Now? Sony doesn’t have other massive money making enterprises?

Really your only defense that makes a lick of sense is that Sony is ahead so they don’t have to do back compat. Which is true but as a customer that’s not a good excuse. A strong market leader is always looking at smaller competitors and adjusting accordingly to maintain their lead. Otherwise you end up coughing up your market position through complacency (I.e. PS2 to PS3).

But we’re getting into the weeds here. Your position (taken from agreement with the other poster) that I took issue with was that it was “insane” to ask for back compat on PS5, and I contend that no, it’s reasonable to ask for it when a competitor has a road map in place to achieve said feature. I don’t see how trotting out corporate org charts makes what I’m asking for unreasonable.

I still have all of my PS2 and PS3 games. The PS5 being backwards compatible with them is the only thing that would make me consider buying one in the first year of it's release. Otherwise, I probably won't get one until a few months after the inevitable From Software exclusive game. The Bluepoint remake of Demon's Souls isn't exciting enough to be the console seller for me.

My point was that it was far more complicated than simply including emulators and the cost to do it isn't zero and likely not negligible. I am almost 100% sure that the publisher of the game also has to agree to backwards comparability on a game. Every game on Xbox isn't backward compatible for that very reason. And that work takes time and that time costs money. Someone has to do that work and publishers don't like doing things for free. Or can do on every game.

Of course it would be a nice service if it existed and I wouldn't mind Sony starting something that could make it happen down the line. But I don't need it and I don't see it as a feature of a console.

@plan6: Backwards compatibility is the true driver of next gen. We have been seeing diminishing graphical returns since msgsV and rise of the tomb raider released on 360 and Xbox one. Fortnite can be played on an Iphone7.

Backwards compatibility might mean a twitch that is tolerable and free of the soup du jour and attempt to cash in on trends and exploit 9 year olds. Games done quick is just an amazing platform to see old games. Twitch is not. Whoever the top 100 twitch streamers are I could care less about because I know none of them are delving into older games or being amazed about what games are and where they come from.

I’m a giant bomb subscriber for demo derbies and being able to see an old game that might be rerealeased as a games with gold or on game pass. I care more about what Jeff has to say about red faction 2 from 8 years ago than anything anybody on twitch is saying RIGHT NOW about anything. Backwards compatibility is about where you want games to go forward as an art form.

Better than (a very generous) 50% of games coming out for PS5 will have skins and supplemental transactions. Those games will have progress bars that are strategically designed to beat the GameStop’s resell algorithm or Gamepass availability.

The mobile games formula has so outright defeated consumers that there is no banner ad or recommendation from anybody that is going to make me click and download one ever again. Epic Vs Apple is really about the ability to keep charging us money. I remember when i was pissed about the Fornite Beta having limited character options. I should have just been patient. That is where the console space is headed.

If I really wanted to play PS2 games, I'll buy a PS2 and an RCA to HDMI converter on ebay for the games that don't work well with PCSX2.

Not at all disapointed or surprised but I am very glad I can still chip through my digital ps4 collection.

I have a PC because of the wide array of things i can do it on, one example is that i'm currently using it as an N64 to play Ocarina of Time, it's traditional for a console to support only its own generation of games but that's not enough for me anymore.
Remasters are great but Sony has a gigantic catalogue of games that aren't supported today, emulation of those titles through one easy to use box would improve its value to me, PS1 and 2 can be pretty well emulated on PC but PS3 is still a struggle, having a way to play the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection would go a long way for me, and i'm very concerned that Tokyo Jungle is going to be forgotten.

@cikame: Tokyo Jungle was on PSNow. It even had trophies. Playstation wants you to subscribe forever which is the M.O. for every digital company these days.

Very much so. Sure, they never really indicated that it would happen but.. It seems like a no-brainer to me. Would've also been an amazing press conference moment when they revealed it and a great counterweight to the supposed high price point.

I'd pay $1000 for a PS5 with full hardware backwards compat :/

As a matter of principle, it would be great to have a solution in place.

That said, I haven't plugged my PS3 in since 2013, which is both when I got the PS4 and moved (pretty sure I never unpacked it after putting it away). Games are either re-released, remastered, or find some other way of showing up again. I just don't go back to really old games that often. I just looked at my shelf, and the one PS1 game I don't have a way of playing right now is MGS1. So many other games--Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4, Okami--I could play in at least one other easy (and legal) way.

@atheistpreacher:

If they did PS2 Vlassics for PS4 style re-released for all the Kings Field games with trophy support, actually thats all I really need, oddly enough.

Though I'd take a Shadow Hearts collection and Valkyrie Profile 2 if they wanted to do a little more I guess...

I mean...unless they have a bd reader im not aware of how would it read a cd-rom

@rohsiph: I mean, honestly, yeah. I have other PS1 and PS2 games, but those are the only ones I play with any frequency. I know they are (or at least were) available as PS Classics on the Japanese PS store, but I haven't wanted to go down that route. I've played them all enough to where I probably don't really need to be able to read the text anymore, but it would still be a bummer anyway.