Sony Makes It Official: PlayStation 5 Won't Natively Support PS1, PS2, PS3 (arstechnica.com) 91
In a Wednesday interview, Sony Interactive Entertainment chief Jim Ryan confirmed that the upcoming PlayStation 5 console won't natively support PS1, PS2, or PS3 games. Ars Technica reports: Ryan explained that "PS5-specific engineering" meant the design team was mostly focused on "the simultaneous use of high-speed SSDs and the new DualSense controller." This prevented Sony from delivering compatibility with older consoles, Ryan told Famitsu, even though he made clear that Sony wanted to support PlayStation 4's "100 million players" by developing compatibility with "99%" of PS4 games, since "we thought that they would like to play PS4 titles on the PS5, as well."
This announcement doesn't clarify whether PS1 games purchased for use on PS4 will transfer to PS5. It also doesn't mention the existing ability for players to stream older-generation games to PS4 from the PlayStation Now cloud-subscription service or whether we should expect that functionality to seamlessly transfer to PS5 in November. [...] Wednesday's dump of PlayStation 5 news did not go into further detail about additional boosts to PS4 games as played on the upcoming console. Instead, we learned that some major PlayStation 5 games, particularly Horizon: Forbidden West and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, will launch simultaneously on PS5 and PS4. This appears to run somewhat counter to Sony's recent comments about maintaining "generations" instead of supporting an Xbox-style "forward-compatible" plan for its biggest games.
This announcement doesn't clarify whether PS1 games purchased for use on PS4 will transfer to PS5. It also doesn't mention the existing ability for players to stream older-generation games to PS4 from the PlayStation Now cloud-subscription service or whether we should expect that functionality to seamlessly transfer to PS5 in November. [...] Wednesday's dump of PlayStation 5 news did not go into further detail about additional boosts to PS4 games as played on the upcoming console. Instead, we learned that some major PlayStation 5 games, particularly Horizon: Forbidden West and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, will launch simultaneously on PS5 and PS4. This appears to run somewhat counter to Sony's recent comments about maintaining "generations" instead of supporting an Xbox-style "forward-compatible" plan for its biggest games.
When reached for comment... (Score:2)
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If you're a games studio exec with half a brain, you know it's stupid to ignore 100 million ps4 consoles out there. It'll take years for ps5 market to reach that size. So I'm not surprised new games will be released for both generations.
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Backwards compatibility is a lot of work for a relatively small audience. Doing PS4 compatibility means there is a large library of games at launch and people look at is an upgrade. Also means they don't need two systems in their room, two HDMI sockets or a switch etc.
The PS4 is x86 based and has fairly abstract APIs, and they already released the Pro so games have been fixed for any issues with slightly different GPUs. The PS3 is a completely different CPU architecture and the APIs are much more hardware s
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In any case, I hope Sony does not end packaging the emulator as Nintendo is doing with their own Super Mario 3D All Stars.
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The PS4 doesn't have any backwards compatibility at all. The older games available for it are either streamed from cloud servers or game specific emulators.
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As far as I know, Sony has never had a generally supported emulator for PS2 or PS3 games. PS3 hardware wasn't quite good enough to do it without PS2 hardware which they removed early on. By the time PS4 rolled around, they decided they didn't need to support PS1/PS2 libraries as a base value add, and instead directed players to re-purchase the games and then they would be bundled with a emulator tuned particularly to that game or a more proper port of the game. PS3 games seem to be much easier for the studi
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A softmodded ps3 can play nearly every ps2 game using the unofficial-official emulation engine already present. Some require some hoops to be jumped through to get them to boot, but I don't think I've had a problem with a single one once I have them running.
I've never really understood the Sony logic behind not rolling this out in a bigger way... the work was already done. It took 15 years- and layer after layer of unofficial and pirate development to unlock a feature that Sony put there on purpose basicall
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Some require some hoops to be jumped through to get them to boot,
I don't know the details, but my basic understanding was that the official emulation is a lot like community emulators, where games frequently need game-specific hacks to disable something that doesn't work right or similar tweak. In other words, to support a game is to officially test it and find shortcomings and fix emulator or hack around it.
That is one thing if you are a free emulator with the right level of expectations and community involvement, it's another as a business entity saying "you can just s
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Re: When reached for comment... (Score:2)
Re: When reached for comment... (Score:2)
Still unlikely. Profit Station 5 revenues depend on new game sales, and anything interfering with that channel will be opposed. If they could get away with PS4 _in_compatibility, without hurting sales much, then they would.
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You know this is bollocks, right?
The PS3 wasn't some super-architecture - despite Sony's ridiculous claims that it was a super computer. It was POWER PC based, just like the XBOX 360.
It had some dumb (really dumb) cell processors that were laughably inadequate for the job (Sony originally claimed the PS3 didn't need a GPU, and had to backtrack quickly when they realised that was load of shite) - and instructions streams for the cell can be recompiled on the fly. See RPCS3.
Microsoft have provided back compat
Re:When reached for comment... (Score:4, Informative)
The solution they used in the PS2 was to have the bulk of the PS2 logic in the Emotion Engine, and to have the boot/IO processor be effectively a PS1 SoC. You effectively had two systems combined, only in PS2 mode the PS1 chip really only handled the I/O tasks in and out of the EE. A comparable split-bus approach was also used by the Dreamcast and earlier on the Saturn (which, in turn, took inspiration for it's rudimentary SMP approach from the earlier SGI POWER series - SMP before the days of snoop controllers and cache coherency). The hardware for the PS1 was quite simple, as it was never originally intended to be a standalone console. Furthermore, the PS1 and 2 were both MIPS based, so you could write a lot of the bootstrap logic once and execute it on either core - the R5900 had an MMU however, in comparison to the R3k on the PS1. The PS3 took a departure from MIPS and jumped on the PowerPC bandwagon, while the PS4 shifted to x86. At this stage, it's certainly not realistic to support backwards compatibility in hardware, and the extent to which some titles were written down to the metal would also make simulation tricky. When I worked on the PS2, I always admired Sony's ingenuity in providing backwards compatibility, but they've simply done too many architecture hops at this point to reasonably support such a legacy. The only option now would be via simulator, which would be a significant undertaking in and of itself, and one I'm not sure there's really sufficient market demand for.
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No, the PS3 was utilizing Cell architecture, which is a very different architecture structured around having numerous sub processors acting in parallel to improve single threaded performance when a single thread is performing multiple tasks simultaneously.
It's drastically different than power PC.
Yes, it can be recompiled on the fly, but it was one of the hardest consoles to produce an emulator for.
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Uhm the way you talk about the CELL processors gives me the idea you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
the CELL wasn't just a simple POWER PC, far from it.
Also Microsoft didn't provide real BC for 360, they only had a few games which were BC, and in reality it where newly 'compiled' executables which just used the original data, you always had to download something extra before you could play the 360 game.
BUT! you're right in they are just talking bullocks in regard to emulating the older PS1, PS
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PS1 games are no problem. I can run them just fine using RetroArch on a Raspberry Pi 4. Never had a problem with the old 3B either. Most of PS1 graphically animated cut scenes were pre-rendered on the iso. So play all the Final Fantasy VII you want on that platform.
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Whilst this is true, maybe there's another way to think about this... The PS/4 had enough additional "grunt" in terms of raw hardware performance that it could run a relatively thin emulato
Re:When reached for comment... (Score:5, Informative)
The PS/2 was an IBM PC with MCA bus and the PS2 is the Playstation 2. Nobody but you puts slashes in the names of Sony consoles.
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Only the high-end PS/2s had the MCA bus.
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More like (Score:2)
They don't want to become a nostalgia company by selling new copies of old titles.
Re:More like (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't want to become a nostalgia company by selling new copies of old titles.
Oh, I am sure they do.
They just want to sell these old titles as a PS4/PS5 remake (like reselling a Blueray movie after DVD after video tape). Backward compatibility lets people play the same title without paying for them again. .
Not surprised (Score:3)
You will probably have to buy lo res new releases of old games for $100 each.
Of course you could probably buy most of those old consoles with all the games you want (and would actually own, instead of some digital download) for less than $100 each.
I'm still on ps3, and never have any plans to buy another one. It was the cheapest Blu-Ray player available at the time, and works ok with my DNLA server. Other than that purchase, I've never given SONY a cent. All the games I have were bought used, for pennies on the dollar.
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You will probably have to buy lo res new releases of old games for $100 each.
Of course you could probably buy most of those old consoles with all the games you want (and would actually own, instead of some digital download) for less than $100 each.
I'm still on ps3, and never have any plans to buy another one. It was the cheapest Blu-Ray player available at the time, and works ok with my DNLA server. Other than that purchase, I've never given SONY a cent. All the games I have were bought used, for pennies on the dollar.
That that's why this is a non-issue. Virtually anyone with a large PS1-3 library already has the hardware to play them. And if their unit dies, second-hand units are cheap. Certainly cheaper than picking up a current-gen PS5 in the hopes of playing PS1-3 games. This is outrage without justification, I think.
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Other than that purchase, I've never given SONY a cent.
Why is this so important to you? Do you personally despise Sony for some reason?
Re:Not surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
You must be new here.
Despising Sony is a natural and commonly understood thing to do for any sensible human being, because said company has repeatedly, behaved itself in a despicable manner.
A few examples are :
Secretly infecting your PC with a rootkit when you thought you were just playing a CD-Audio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Allowed PS3 consoles to be used as linux workstations in order to benefit from advantageous import taxes, then remove it from anyone who would want to use it online.
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Subpar network security and criminal negligence about credit card information : storing customer passwords in PLAIN TEXT i.e. unencrypted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Sueing out of existence the only shop that would allows you to buy Sony PSP consoles from other regions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And a long history of outright lies about their products. Example :
"The PS2 will do Toy Story level graphics in real time!"
https://money.cnn.com/1999/03/... [cnn.com]
Re:Not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still on ps3, and never have any plans to buy another one. It was the cheapest Blu-Ray player available at the time, and works ok with my DNLA server. Other than that purchase, I've never given SONY a cent. All the games I have were bought used, for pennies on the dollar.
Consequently, Sony has no reason to give two fucks about you.
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They don't care about turnips, only about people who give them money. If they can't squeeze blood from you, they're on to the next potential victim.
Just another worthless AC post from another worthless AC using the worthless AC posting feature
Re: Not surprised (Score:2)
PS1 games are $6-$10 dollars (Score:2)
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vendor lock in (Score:1, Troll)
We need to move to a new model (Score:3)
Re: We need to move to a new model (Score:2)
It is already at that point kinda. The new gen doesnt enable new types of games. Ps4 pro2 and xbox x2. Both of them will be same interfaces and all as prev gen
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I think we are already there as evidenced by the XBox Series S. A lot of people don't even care about 4K and just want to be able to play the new games, even if it's only at 1080p or 1440p. This is a huge shift in the industry. It's now not about trying to one up the other guy on visual effects but on trying to get the console into as many homes as possible and make the money off games licensing.
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Note 16k would be enough resolution to more than cover 180 degrees of vision with such resolution that the best part of you vision can't tell the difference. In other words 16k is enough for the resolution facet of very wide angle VR without having to take advantage of foveated rendering.
If you have a 100 inch screen and are sitting at least 6 feet away, your eye cannot resolve more than 4k resolution. For 8k you'd have to be closer than 2 feet to even theoretically tell the difference even for a 100 inch s
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We are at the dawn, not the end (Score:2)
Consoles will eventually reach a point where diminishing returns on graphics happens. AMD said it was at 16K which will probably be the PS6 Pro, or maybe PS7.
There's a lot more to this than just resolution.
For example, the newest consoles are the first ones that can realistically support raytracing. But even that will probably have a fair number of limitations for a few generations.
Beyond that, you can imagine dedicated physics hardware, or neural network processors abounding that could mean improved AI in
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We really don't. There's always room to use available hardware. Got some spare CPU capacity, start applying some more complicated algorithms to other parts of the game. We can always render more detailed particle effects, more sane character movement decisions, or even apply better calculations to the computer NPCs.
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Moron gamers continue to get abused and power-fisted by games companies and still queue up for more. It's hillarious.
That's kind of the way I feel about it too, but I also suspect that the pool of people willing submitting to this is diminishing.
Now, with Nintendo selling Mario and Zelda over and over, year after year, system after system, I'm not so sure that very large pool of idiots is diminishing just yet. But it will happen.
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This alone makes you wonder why Sony doesnt see this as a hot cash grab
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There's also the generational shifts that happen along the way. I played Zelda on the NES in the late 80s/early 90s, and my kids now play it on the Switch, 30 years later. I would imagine if you've remained a gamer your entire life, this kind of regurgitation of the franchises would be annoying, but there's certainly a nostalgic element to being able to share these experiences between generations that Nintendo has always been good at tapping into. Having had a 20+ year gap between when I got out of gaming a
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How many people are going to buy from EA and then bitch and moan about how terrible the company is? I'm guessing tons.
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I'm starting to think that the internet started getting this awful roughly when I had to see this stupid ass post from you over and over.
I know, you're not actually reading any of this and I'm replying to something you uploaded with a script, but much like your completely useless posts on slashdot about shit none of us have anything to do with, I'm sending you this completely useless reply.
So what? (Score:2)
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So, you're 5 years old?
Or he's like me, and at the time, the PS1 seemed like a toy compared to a PC. And then by the time the PS2 came out, well, it was still a toy. If I were younger, then maybe I'd have wanted a PlayStation for Christmas from my parents, but I was already an adult and wasn't interested in them.
It wasn't until the PS3 was out and had a few games that I bought one. But, by then consoles started getting games first, and they seemed pretty decent for the time. Also, it was a blu-ray player which seemed useful too.
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You posted a comment, so we know beyond any doubt that you do care, and want to see more stories like this.
At least, that's how the people who run Slashdot will operate.
Nice work there, sparky.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Score:2)
Usually that is done on my still-working PS1 or with my PS1 disc loaded into my PS3.
My last foray into the Playstation family was with the PS3, so this news regarding the PS5 doesn't really bother me too much, but I just wanted to point out that anyone who truly wants to play generations-old games probably ought to maintain and/or invest in the appropriate console hardware to play those nostal
Not even emulation? (Score:3)
Re:Not even emulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Backwards compatibility is a relatively cheap value-add for console, seems like a wasted opportunity.
Backward compatibility means support for letting play the games you already paid for.
Having you re-buy the same titles (which might be an emulation anyway) is much more lucrative.
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Which is dumb, because due to licensing restrictions and game companies going out of business all the time, many games will never go up for sale again. Hell, even newer games get "de-listed" all the time. You can't buy them again even if you want to.
Rather than profit, this sounds more like spite to me. Even if we can't make more money on it, how dare you use something for FREE!
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Emulation is the bane of revenue, didn't you know?
Why do you think Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Mario64, Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, etc. have PC remakes and/or are being sold as $60 bundles on consoles? Because it's technically difficult to make them work on newer machines? Because you couldn't build an emulation layer (e.g. WiiWare?) technically.
No, it's because you want to make people buy them again. It's the White Album problem. It retains their intellectual property because they can then claim
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Considering they used PCSX ReArmed for the Playstation mini, I don't see any reason why they couldn't make an PCSX Reloaded app for the PS5, (or even the PS4 for that matter) to Emulate PS1 Games. As for the PS2, PCSX2 would probably run fine on a PS5 as well, PS4 might be close, but doable. PS3 emulation using RPCS3 is pretty much on the edge of what the console could do, although many games would be playable.
The Limiting factor is whether or not Sony wants to support an official emulator app on the consol
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I don't see any reason why they couldn't make an PCSX Reloaded app for the PS5, (or even the PS4 for that matter) to Emulate PS1 Games.
That's a really good idea. Then they could sell it (virtually) to you for like $199, since they won't make any money off you playing games you already own.
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Backward compatibility is nice but doesn't that almost always result in some bloated OS?
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I used to have seven or so consoles hooked up at once through a combination of RF and AV switches. Now I emulate all of those platforms on the rare occasion that I actually want to play ancient games.
If you want to play games for PS2 or later you're best off with a real console. Anything older is usually emulated pretty well. Obv. Saturn is a counterexample.
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And it's even better given something you pointed out that I forgot - discs get scratched. They also get sold to Gamestop or whatever. Instead of getting frustrated because
Coming Soon... (Score:3)
Keep old consoles (Score:2)
Hardware (Score:3)
The PS1 used a MIPS CPU and a custom GPU, along with a custom video compression codec built-in to the CPU
The PS2 used a custom MIPS-based CPU with a custom GPU
The PS3 used the Cell processor bolted on to a customized nVidia GPU
The PS4 used a (mostly) off-the-shelf PC design
So, yeah, the three weird architectures won't be implemented in PS5 hardware, which is also PC based. Sony will pull a Nintendo Virtual Console and emulate them, probably.
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The PS5 has the grunt to easily emulate the first two architectures, no special hardware needed. Don't give them lame excuses.
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Re: Hardware (Score:2)
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but imagine sony selling a separate "legacystation" with actual ps1 - ps3 hardware
Understandable for PS3 - WTF for others (Score:2)
PS4 compatibility is obviously a high priority, and the similarity of the architecture makes it an obvious point of interest.
The PS3 was, and remains, radically different from the generations before and after it, and at-speed emulation would be difficult to justify in processing power or development time at this moment.
But there is absolutely no excuse for not having a rock-solid, OS-level PS1 and PS2 emulator in the system at launch. License something if you no longer have the in-house development to emula
Cons of consoles (Score:2)
This planned obsolescence is one of the downsides of consoles that makes me stick to PC gaming.
bullshit.. (Score:2)
Don't you still own your old PS4? (Score:1)
On PC, I Still Play Thief Dark Project and Quake (Score:2)
Most of these have HD remasters (Score:2)
Most of these games have HD remasters with many quality of life improvements, all DLC included, and can often be found for $3-$5 on sales. These games have been missing for the entire PS4 generation so I don't think anyone was expecting them.
Only a fool would have expected otherwise (Score:1)