PlayStation 5 lead architect Mark Cerny had previously teased that PS4 titles would have to endure some kind of certification process before they can be played on Sony’s next-gen console, but SIE President and CEO Jim Ryan has gone ahead and dropped some very good news for those of you who were hoping to run legacy hits on the latest hardware.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Ryan stated that “99 percent” of the PS4 library would be playable on the PS5. Unfortunately, he had no additional details to share (which games comprise that remaining one percent?), but his specificity suggests that the impressive level of backward compatibility is genuine.
There’s some good news for PC gamers here, too, as Ryan echoed Sony’s commitment of bringing more of its exclusives to other platforms. “The vision is that while we very much respect the primacy of PlayStation as the principle resting place for the great gaming intellectual property we have, we kind of think it’s time to explore extending the IP,” he said. “We think both of these steps are perfectly logical and rational things for us to do. We should be making that IP work a bit harder as an acquisition tool for the PlayStation community.”
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. We’re thinking that the more exclusives come to PC, the less PC gamers are going to want a PlayStation – but nobody tell Ryan that.