With well over 100m consoles sold since 2013, backwards compatibility is an essential feature for the upcoming PlayStation 5, allowing PS4 and PS4 Pro users the chance to bring their existing library of games over to the next generation console. But in common with the precedent set by the Xbox compatibility team, Sony aims to do more – to allow the extra power of the new console to improve the experience. But realistically, what should we expect? Sony mentions more stable frame-rates and improved resolutions but to what extent can titles actually be improved?
There’s still some confusion about the level of backwards compatibility we’ll get from the PlayStation 5 at launch – and messaging from Sony hasn’t been crystal clear. In his recent presentation, Mark Cerny said this: “Running PS4 and PS4 Pro titles at boosted frequencies has also added complexity, the boost is truly massive this time around and some game code just can’t handle it – testing has to be done on a title by title basis. Results are excellent, though. We recently took a look at the top 100 PS4 titles as ranked by play time, and we’re expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PS5.”
Sony then clarified to say that Cerny was focusing on a sub-set of the available games, that hundreds of titles have been tested and hundreds more will be tested in the run-up to launch – but it sounds very much like the process will be ongoing and that you may own games in your collection that may not run at launch, or may not run with the extra power of the PlayStation 5 in place if they do. We know from a slide in the Cerny presentation (and indeed from the AMD test leak from last December) that PS5 can run in native mode with full power or in compatibility-orientated PS4 and PS4 Pro modes. It’s not been explicitly confirmed, but we would hope that PS4 Pro-enabled titles will have access to the PS4 Pro performance characteristics.
But first of all, let’s lay down some ground rules and try to manage expectations. Short of a developer delivering a new patch, PS4 games running on PS5 will still operate within their original design limitations. Titles with a 30fps cap will not run at 60fps, for example, even if the horsepower is almost certainly there to do so. If a game runs with a fixed resolution – say, 1080p – it’s also highly unlikely that this will change. The extra power be used to more effectively deliver on the developer’s original design targets though, and from our perspective, it may well be PS4 Pro-enabled titles that offer up the most compelling opportunities for improvement.