Though next-gen titles are obviously going to be the most crucial thing for the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, something else that’s also going to be important for both consoles is backward compatibility. Both Sony and Microsoft are investing on that front- but it also seems like there’s a disparity in how much both companies are doing so. While Microsoft are essentially doing what they’ve been doing for while now – with the Xbox Series X confirmed to run Xbox One games and a selection of Xbox 360 and Xbox titles – the PS5 will be running no legacy titles beyond (most of) the PS4’s library.
Many feel that this is an area where Sony could do more, and someone else who agrees with that sentiment is Marc-André Jutras, technical director at Cradle Games, developers of the upcoming sci-fi Soulslike RPG Hellpoint. Speaking to GamingBolt in a recent interview, Jutras said that given the PS5’s powerful hardware, it should logically be able to run all past PlayStation games, and from the perspective of a gamer, it is frustrating that it doesn’t.
“As a gamer, it’s hard to figure out what’s the big deal with this,” said Jutras. “How come PS5 isn’t backward compatible with PS4, 3, 2, 1? If I can find some emulator for all those, and the new consoles are as powerful as a good gaming PC, then there’s no reason for all those games to not run, even with glitches. I wish they could just find a way to deal with it and just cover everything, even if not perfectly.”
That said, Jutras does feel that there are certain factors that might make that hard to achieve- legal reasons and licenses being one such factor.
“As a developer however, I can see where some legal stuff could get a bit blurry, especially if the goal is to have those older gamers sold in some stores,” he said. “Some companies don’t exist anymore and licenses of those titles might not be so easy to figure out. I also understand that older consoles might have some form of hardware DRM that could prevent newer consoles from reading older disks.”
“To be honest, I just wish backward compatibility wasn’t a novel thing and just an expected feature, covering all titles,” Jutras concluded.
In the same interview, Jutras also spoke to us about the power difference between the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, and how much of a difference he thinks that will end up making in the long run. Read more on that through here.
Following recent delay, Hellpoint is due out in Q2 of this year for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.