Microsoft has pulled so far ahead of Sony as far as backward compatibility is concerned these last few years, it’s not even funny. Though Sony has thankfully at least allowed for PS4 games to be playable on the PS5 (some even with retroactive enhancements), Microsoft’s approach has been far more comprehensive, covering a much wider range of games, and offering features such as FPS Boost and Auto HDR on top. But a new patent filed by Sony gives us hope that they might at least be thinking of trying to catch up.
This patent (spotted by MP1st) talks about awarding players Trophies while playing legacy games through emulation. In and of itself, that might not mean too much (though the idea of Trophies being retroactively applied to older games without re-releases is definitely an intriguing one), but it does suggest that Sony might be considering making older PlayStation games playable on PS5 through emulation.
Of course, this is just a patent, and a patent doesn’t always have to materialize into anything real. In fact, more often than not, patents are just cases of companies protecting their ideas and technologies. But if this does turn into something real, it would be a much-needed step forward for backward compatibility on PlayStation. Here’s hoping.