This generation’s upcoming console transition isn’t so much about pure face-melting hardware grunt, but rather a shift towards making the experience of playing games feel better. The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 both feature some lightning-quick solid-state drive technology, that’ll make games from several generations play that much better.
Xbox is headed into this new frontier with a lot of backwards compatibility momentum behind them, but Sony pales in comparison to the work that Microsoft has poured into creating an easily-accessible library of content. The PS5 will be backwards compatible with PS4 games, but the library is far more limited and focused on greatest hits over pure numbers.
What about PlayStation games from the original trilogy of consoles though? That’s looking increasingly unlikely thanks to Ubisoft temporarily letting the cat out of the bag. In a new support page about the console transition (that has been taken down since it went live last night), Ubisoft straight-up claimed that PS1, PS2 and PS3 games weren’t going to be making the cut:
Backwards compatibility will be available for supported PlayStation 4 titles, but will not be possible for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, or PlayStation games.
As mentioned above, that page has been taken down since then, likely to a variety of reasons: Sony maybe saying “UBI-DUDE COME ON”, the information possibly being outdated already or this lack of backwards compatibility only being valid for Ubisoft games. Who knows? At this point in time, the only console that you can play the best Splinter Cell on (Conviction, fight me) is an Xbox-branded one.
As for Sony, news on retro gaming has been pretty much non-existent since the silky-smooth voice of system architect Mark Cerny confirmed that nearly a hundred of the most well-received PS4 games would be ready for PS5 launch day. More will come, but the timeline on when that library will increase remains blurry for now.
Last Updated: September 1, 2020
