Microsoft’s commitment to backward compatibility on the Xbox One – and, in turn, the upcoming Xbox Series X – has earned them a lot of admiration. Now, with the PS5, Sony are once again focusing on backward compatibility and making it a central part of their strategy to get audiences to transition to next-gen. We don’t yet know what the extent of that will be, but recent, Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot spoke about it.
At Ubisoft’s recent earnings call, when asked about backward compatibility on next-gen consoles, Guillemot said, “Those consoles will be running almost all the back catalog of the previous consoles. It will be something new in the industry. It will help the old generations to continue to be big consoles on the market for years to come.”
Guillemot’s wording of “previous consoles” leads to the question if, say, the PS5 will run only the PS4’s games, or possibly older PlayStation titles as well. Microsoft’s backward compatibility already does play some original Xbox titles, so is it possible that Sony could attempt that as well? Or maybe when he says “previous consoles” he just means the PS4 and the Xbox One.
Either way, with Microsoft committing to supporting both the Xbox One and the Xbox Series X equally for at least couple of years, it’s clear that current-gen and next-gen will see quite a lot of overlap.