Sony Patents New Method For Backward Compatibility

The PS5 and Xbox Scarlett are going to be launching soon enough, and the one question a lot of people have about them is that of backward compatibility. Given Microsoft’s commitment to the feature, it’s not a stretch to assume they will continue to implement it going forward, but what about Sony? And to what degree?

It seems like we are getting some indications that they will look at having the feature in some capacity. According to a patent filed at the Japan Patent Office (via Twinfinite), it seems like Sony’s Mark Cerny has devised a new implementation for backward compatibility that would work on a universal system level. Essentially, it would let the system (never referenced as PS5, but we can pretty much guess) check what software is running; if it is native software, nothing further is done, but if it is “legacy” software, the CPU spoofs its ID to make the software think it is running on the system it was developed for.

Of course, this is only one step in the process (you would need to have proper emulation or hardware compatibility to actually run the game), but this suggests, much like previously filed patents by Sony, that they are at least looking at the feature. Now the question is, what consoles would the PS5 be compatible with? PS4 is an easy guess, since by all accounts, PS5 will continue using x86-64, just like the PS4 did, but what about the older consoles? PS1? PS2? Dare I hope… PS3?

We’ll find out eventually, I hope. Right now all we can do is speculate.