The PlayStation 4 is Sony's second-best-selling console of all time, only behind the PlayStation 2 in popularity. There are over 110 million PlayStation 4 consoles in the wild, and more than 4,000 games have been published for the console.
When the PlayStation 5 arrives on November 12, it will be able to play the "overwhelming majority" of those games, according to a newly discovered Sony support page detailing how backwards compatibility works on the new console.
"An amazing collection of thousands of PS4 games can be played on your PS5 console," the page says, with only a handful of exceptions listed. The new console will play digital and disc-based PS4 games, and some will even run better due to the increased horsepower of the PS5.
"Select PS4 titles will see increased loading speeds on the PS5 console, and will also leverage Game Boost, offering improved or more stable frame rates. Some titles with unlocked frame rates or dynamic resolution up to 4K may see higher fidelity," a separate PlayStation blog post says.
Moreover, both disc-based and digital games will move forward, Sony says. Games on disc may require a downloaded update, and digital games can be re-downloaded from the PlayStation Store through your PSN account. There is also an option for WiFi based data transfer between PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 — the first we've heard of such functionality on the upcoming PlayStation 5.
In addition to explaining backwards compatibility, the support page also reconfirms that popular PlayStation 4 peripherals and accessories — like the DualShock 4 gamepad and PlayStation VR headset — will work with the new console.
The explicit details on PlayStation 5 backwards compatibility help to clarify the previous back and forth messaging from Sony regarding PS4 games on PS5. At one point earlier this year, it sounded like only a small percentage of PlayStation 4 games would work on the PlayStation 5.
"We recently took a look at the top 100 PlayStation 4 titles, as ranked by playtime, and we're expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PlayStation 5," PS5 lead architect Mark Cerny said in a "deep dive" video Sony published in March. That language was later amended, but it remained unclear how backwards compatibility would work at launch.
It remains unclear how, if at all, Sony is handling backwards compatibility beyond the PlayStation 4. In contrast, Microsoft's next-gen consoles offer some level of backwards compatibility all the way back to the original Xbox.
The $400 PlayStation 5 Digital Edition and $500 PlayStation 5 are scheduled to launch on November 12. Take a look at the new console right here:
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