Why on earth would Sony spend its time developing backward compatibility for PS3 titles on PS5 when it can just nickel and dime players through a subscription service, as demonstrated by the new Premium tier of its revamped PlayStation Plus program, which includes the perk of being able to stream PS3 games?
Who knows, but the ability to play PS3 titles on Sony’s latest console is indeed coming, according to VentureBeat journalist Jeff Grubb, who showed up in a new episode for his Game Mess channel on YouTube yesterday and suggested that PS5 owners would eventually be able to load up classic PS3 games on their machine.
“Since talking about this all week, I’ve looked, I’ve asked… it sounds like Sony might be working on emulation for PS3 on PS5,” Grubb said. “It may take some time.
“I wish they would come out and tell us that,” he added. “Tell us that you care about this stuff because that is what was missing from the PS Plus announcement… to me, it seemed like they didn’t care about any of it. They just slapped it together, put a new name on it and sold it.”
Sony unveiled its answer to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service this week, a revamped version of PlayStation Plus that comprises three tiers. PS Plus Premium, the flagship option, costs $17.99 per month and counts a catalog of over 700 games across multiple PlayStation generations as one of its benefits.
Sony ‘could be working’ to bring proper PS3 game emulation to PS5, it’s claimed (VGC)
Earlier this week Sony announced that it would be bringing classic games to its latest console via its new PS Plus Premium subscription.
When it launches in June for $17.99/£13.49 a month, subscribers will gain benefits including access to 340 games from the original PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PSP generations.
However, while the majority of those games will be available to download and play on PS5 via emulation, Sony confirmed that PS3 games would only be playable via cloud streaming.
According to Venturebeat’s Grubb, however, the service could eventually receive PS3 emulation similar to the other retro systems it’s set to support.
Discussion (6 replies)
Join Discussion →I don't understand. Oh well I guess if I could load up my old rockband games. If I had those for a previous generation that would make sense.
Someone really needs to come out with a fully licensed rock band/guitar hero game for pc with controllers that feel a bit up market from the I think I'm gonna gonna Crack it by accident ones that came with the games.
Like give me one with cherry mx switches under neath on a metallic core structure with wireless and wired options and the ability to tension and service the whammy bar. And I would be a happy camper at say 200 maybe 250.
Another 50 for the game. And an option to unlock "all" previous tracks for a nominal fee of like 20 bucks and I would be ok. Heck make it a yearly fee of 20 bucks so the artists who write the music get some kick back from it all. I can appreciate that.
Problem is navigating the legal quagmire and the tooling and production of the guitars would be very cost prohibitive I imagine. That and those games have largely left the mind of people especially with covid and all.
Back-compat is usually a big deal for people, but I keep and use my systems for life. I still have a working PS3, and PS3 emulation has come a long way on PC, so I don't really need future Sony consoles to be able to run PS3 (or older) games. On the other hand, I did play a lot of PS1 games on PS3 even though I still have a working PS1 (sadly my PS2 no longer reads discs, and my PS3 doesn't run PS2 games), and I use PS1 emulation on PC. I have friends who got a PS5 because they skipped PS4, and PS5 allows them to cover PS4 as well. When my sister and her husband lost my original Xbox for years (finally got it back in recent months), XB1 came in handy for running original Xbox games. I do run DS games on my soft-modded 3DS, but I still have my DS Lite (in which I ran an R4 card). XBSX/XBSS having back-compat for all the previous generations of Xbox is pretty cool though. My issue is that not all my original Xbox games run on the newer Xboxes, and some of my X360 games don't work on XB1 or XBSX/XBSS. Also kinda sh1tty that for some X360 games that do work on newer Xboxes, their DLC does not. I used to run GCN games on Wii but I've gone back to using the GCN itself. Wii U will run Wii games but eh, I already got a soft-modded Wii. Wii U will also run GCN games if you soft-mod it. Anyways back-compat is cool, but it is less useful for lifelong gamers who still have the older systems, and access to console emulation on PC (or even on other systems).
A while back I found some replacement aftermarket drives. I never tried one but they are out there. Might be worth a search if you really want to revive it.
Yeah I think I even have a few saved for future purchase, but honestly I was thinking of just replacing the optical drive altogether with one of those SD card reader thingies. I've seen it done with various systems like the PS2 and Dreamcast (an example: https://hackinformer.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/4C3279DF-B748-467E-8FAA-81F88001BF7D.jpeg).
One of my friends did it with his Gamecube:
I've also seen people replace the optical drives in their classic consoles with SSDs.
Very cool. Makes sense with all the downloadable ROMs out there and way more convenient and efficient. No emulation and ready to go!
I bet they're only developing PS3 b/c so they *can* nickel and dime players through a subscription service. I reckon these PS3 titles will be digital only and available through their PS Plus service (ala Nintendo Online) and it won't actually be able to run PS3 discs. Sony's been less bullish than MS when it comes to b/c, and I have a feeling they'd only be developing it if it was to bolster their existing service and not cut into PS Plus Premium (or whatever their higher tier subscription is called).