Watch out — over 100 PS4 games might struggle on PS5

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A surprising number of PS4 games come with a warning when booted on PS5

PS5
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

With the PS5 now in some lucky homes, it’s pretty clear that Sony’s promise was correct: the “overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles” do indeed play brilliantly on PS5. Some, such as The Last Guardian, run far better than they ever did on last-generation hardware.

But it’s also clear that Sony’s official unsupported list of ten so-so titles doesn’t tell the full story. A mysterious webpage pulled by Ubisoft had suggested as much, and now it’s confirmed. 

Kotaku reports that “around 115 games” on the US PlayStation store come with the following warning: “When playing on PS5, this game may exhibit errors or unexpected behavior and some features available on PS4 may be absent.”

This is annoyingly vague: there’s a big difference between multiplayer being disabled, and a game-breaking bug 20 hours into an RPG, for example. Unfortunately, that’s all the guidance you’re getting.

What’s more confusing is that Kotaku spot checked a number of the games on the list, and while some errors were immediately obvious — the migraine inducing shadow flicker on Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, for example — others seems to play flawlessly. Both Grip and Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate seemed to work without any obvious issues, which would personally just leave me anxious over exactly when and how things were going to implode.

The other games Kotaku tested were Everybody’s Golf (flickering scenery, but there’s a PS5 patch coming), Flinthook (which suffered from some slowdown) and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (some blurry areas in the opening scenes). 

It’s not clear what sets the games in the list apart from anything else, but if you want to do some detective work on your own PS4 games collection, you can filter the titles with the backwards compatibility warning via this Github tool. Just change the “PS5 BC” dropdown to “bootable” and you’ll see every title that comes with a warning.

Ultimately, the PS5 has a pretty strong lineup of launch titles to keep you busy. All the same, it’s definitely worth asking around online before you purchase any additional PS4 games to play on the new hardware, Just to make sure things work as expected.   

  • Use a PS4 VPN to stream extra content and avoid network throttling
Alan Martin
Alan Martin

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing up the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. Or, more likely, playing Spelunky for the millionth time.