We just got more details about how PS4 games will work on PS5, and it's good news for anyone with a large collection of games. When you get started with Sony’s PS5 by logging into your PSN account, a library of supported PS4 content will pop up on the menu.
That’s according to Hideaki Nishino, Sony's senior vice president of platform planning and management, who told Game Informer a little bit more about what we can expect with the PS5’s backwards compatibility.
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"We know our fans have invested a lot of time building their collection of PS4 games, so library portability is critically important," said Nishino. "When you sign in to PS5 with your account, you will automatically see your library of played PS4 content through the menu. Approximately 99 percent of the thousands of PS4 titles, both catalog and newly published, will be playable on PS5, and we’re excited about supporting our PlayStation community as they transition from PS4 to PS5 when they’re ready."
We already know the latter part, but it’s interesting to find out that PS5 backwards compatibility with PS4 games could be a rather seamless process; it would seem like there won’t be too much feedly digging around for old product codes or game disks.
That being said, we still don’t know exactly how PS4 games will run on PS5 hardware. Sony has previously detailed various backwards compatibility emulation modes for the PS5, which restrains its power so that it can run older games without overwhelming them. But we’d still expect there to be some form of performance boost for PS4 games, notably in loading times.
Hands-ons with the Xbox Series X have shown that Xbox One games load a lot faster and benefit from hikes in frame rates, even when they haven’t been optimized for Microsoft’s next-generation console hardware. If the PS5 doesn't do that, it could be rather disappointing.
Rumors have suggested that the PS5 will give PS4 games a boost. And with the PS Plus Collection bringing in a clutch of PS4 exclusive games to the PS5 as part of a subscription service, we’d expect some optimizations to be in place, even if it's just smoothing out the load times and frame rate of games like Bloodborne.
With the PS5 going on sale in the U.S. on November 12, we’ve not got too long to wait until we see how fleshed-out backwards compatibility is on the console. PS5 pre-orders are also live if you want to try and bag a console before it goes on sale, though the console is quickly selling out at most stores.
