Rumors have been flying all over the place today that Sony might be working on bringing backwards compatibility to the PS4. Those rumors were jump-started when a Reddit user named Twinspectregaming posted a screengrab of what looked like a PS4 dashboard with a PS2 game loading on it. The poster added that when he tried to click on the game, it gave a message saying “there are no content items.” This led to many wondering if this was part of some testing being done to bring PS2 games to the PS4.
Complicating all of this is that shortly after the screenshot really started circulating around the web, the user posted an update on Reddit saying that the image was a fake. A number of Reddit users decided that instead of taking that explanation at face value, there were some who believed that it was likely the person who posted the shot suddenly realized they have violated an NDA. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that the user is being truthful (now) and either made, or found a fake image.
At the same time, there has been some smoke regarding backwards compatibility outside of Playstation Now for a while. Rumors were circulating earlier this year after PEGI ratings for PS2 games Twisted Metal: Black, Ape Escape 2, and Dark Cloud 2 popped up on the web. We’ll have to wait and see whether Sony is going to continue to only offer older games through the PS Now program or whether they’ll follow Microsoft’s lead and actually start offering backwards compatibility to previous generation games.