Jim Ryan, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said in an earlier interview that about 99% of PlayStation 4 games can be played on the PlayStation 5. However, due to the new DualSense wireless control handle and the new SSD architecture, backward compatibility with previous PlayStation 3 games is not currently available.
According to Jim Ryan, it is expected that many PlayStation 4 players will upgrade directly to PlayStation 5. At the same time, many players who purchase PlayStation 5 will also hope to play PlayStation 4 platform games. Therefore, the backward compatibility of PlayStation 5 platform game mechanisms is retained in the design of PlayStation 4. At the same time, through the PlayStation Plus selected collection service, members who subscribe to the PlayStation Plus service can directly play the PlayStation 4 game content included in the shelves for free.
However, apparently due to hardware compatibility limitations, the PlayStation 5 has not yet added further backward compatibility with game content from platforms prior to the PlayStation 3, indicating that Sony Interactive Entertainment's idea of backward compatibility in games is different from Microsoft's approach of providing backward compatibility to earlier Xbox platforms from Xbox One to Xboxs Series X and Xbox Series S.
Although it is true that judging from the mentality of existing players, the proportion of those who will continue to play PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, or even early PlayStation platform games is not high, compared to Microsoft's willingness to provide more backward-compatible game modes, Sony Interactive Entertainment is obviously more inclined to let players focus on new platform game content.
