PS5 Won't Run PS3, PS2 and PS1 Games
PlayStation 5 will be backwards compatible with PlayStation 4, but we will not launch our PS1, PS2 and PS3 games, as officially confirmed by Sony.
- Sony focused on maintaining backwards compatibility with PlayStation 4 when developing PlayStation 5.
- Due to lack of time it was decided to skip emulation of older Sony consoles.
PlayStation 5 will retain backwards compatibility with PlayStation 4, allowing for 99% of the games released on the current generation consoles to run on PS5. We won't be able to launch our games from older consoles, i.e. PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, Sony Interactive Entertainment's boss Jim Ryan admitted in an interview for Famitsu.
He was asked if we could play titles from PS1, PS2 and PS3 on PS5. Ryan's answer was clear:
"When creating PS5, we kept in mind that there are over 100 million PlayStation 4 owners out there, and we thought they might want to run their games on PS5, so we included backwards compatibility with the console for this reason. We also focused on the fast SSD and DualSense controller, so there was no time to emulate older consoles."
So we have official confirmation that PS5 will not run our games from PS1, PS2 and PS3, at least right after the release of the console. Perhaps some time after the launch of PlayStation 5 the developers will prepare the right emulator. We know, however, that this is not a priority for Sony, so it's better not to hide our older consoles if we're into retro.
