Why is PS5 not compatible with PS1 games? – an expert explains

No doubt, there is a huge competition between the next-generation PS5 (Sony PlayStation 5) and XSX (Microsoft Xbox Series X). None of these consoles want to lag behind in terms of what it is offering. Microsoft has since announced that the XSX is backward compatible with all Xbox One games. However, the PS5 can only support most PS4 games (more than 4000 models, not all). To this end, many feel that the PS5 is backward in terms of compatibility. Nevertheless, these things are not as easy as we think them to be.

Recently, Marc-André Jutras, the developer of Cradle Games (Hellpoint), talked about this in an interview. He said that the PS5 compatibility problem stems from authorization. You can not easily get authorization for many old games for multiple reasons. His words

“From the player’s perspective, it’s actually difficult to understand what’s so difficult. Why can’t it be compatible with PS4, PS3, or even PS1 games? And if you try to use the emulators of these hosts, you will find that the old games running on the high-end PC are very smooth. So there is no reason not to expect the new console to be compatible with these old games, even if some aspects are not perfect…As a developer, I often see that some IP regulations are gradually deviating from what they use to be. Some old games are available on the shelves today, some companies no longer exist. All these aside, licensing issues can not be sorted out easily”

Sony PS5 hardware

The Sony PlayStation 5 uses a custom AMD 8 core 3.5GHz Zen 2 CPU, a custom RDNA 2 GPU containing 36 sets of CU units, a floating-point computing capability of 10.28 TFLOPs, a 16GB GDDR6 memory, a custom 825GB SSD, and a 4K UHD Blu-ray drive. SSD is the key to PS5 performance improvement. The seek time of PS4 takes 2-50 seconds, while PS5 is almost instant. In terms of loading speed, PS5 can load 2GB of memory in 0.27 seconds, while PS4 takes 20 seconds to load 1GB. Sony believes that the new SSD will significantly speed up the PS5 game loading speed. According to the company, games can launch within a second with almost no loading time. Due to the substantial increase in performance, its asking price is expected to increase.