Following up on Mark Cerny’s “The Road to PS5” GDC presentation, Sony has updated their wrap-up post on the PlayStation Blog to clarify a point Cerny touched on.
In his presentation, Mark Cerny mentioned that most of the Top 100 most-played PS4 titles had been tested and prepared for PlayStation 5 backwards compatibility, demonstrating how well their efforts were coming along. However, in the midst of the massive amount of information covered in the talk and the blog post, the actual meaning of this statement was lost, and many viewers thought that only a bit less than 100 games would be backwards compatible come the PS5’s launch. Thanks to an update, it turns out that is not the case, and dramatically so.
Sony has devoted significant efforts to enable players to replay their favorites on PS5, and ballparked that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on the next-gen console. They have already tested hundreds of PS4 titles, and are preparing to test thousands more as the PS5 launch draws near. Backward compatible titles are expected to run at a boosted frequency on PS5 so that they can benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions. Currently, Sony is evaluating games on a title-by-title basis to spot any issues that require the original software developers to change something. I fear for Bloodborne, but I hope it gets the manpower it needs to run at… any stable framerate.
So, there you have it. The PlayStation 5 will support hundreds, if not thousands, of backwards compatible PlayStation 4 games at launch. In the meantime, Sony will provide updates on backward compatibility, along with more PS5 news, in the months ahead, and CGMagazine will be there to cover it. Stick around and stay safe!
