PlayStation 4 Backwards Compatability for PS5 won't be 100% at launch, PS5 too fast for some titles, tweaks and testing on game-by-game basis

Cipherr · Mar 19, 2020

Alright so after looking at the video... Top 100 will be ready, more will come over the lifetime. Not the best solution but itll do. At least the previous gen needs to be supported. Im not going to count them off for not supporting PS321. Thats just silly at this point IMO. Previous gen needs to be there though, especially when the first year of software for all consoles is lean in comparison to the middle meaty years.

Not having full backwards compat is unfortunate but at least it will come eventually. Thats just fine. Doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

sjackso3 · Mar 19, 2020

prodyg said:
sure, but it will probably look and run better on XSX since it has already been confirmed to get a free update to take advantage of the XSX capabilities.

All of this has me really leaning heavily towards buying XSX at launch. It just seems more complete. I may still get the PS5 later once some titles come out that are exclusive to it.

AllChan7 · Mar 19, 2020

So are only 100 titles fully BC at launch with more titles added as time goes on?

Or

Are 100 titles fully BC for boost mode while the others run only on legacy modes?

Linkeds2 · Mar 19, 2020

AllChan7 said:
So are only 100 titles fully BC at launch with more titles added as time goes on?

Or

Are 100 titles fully BC for boost mode while the others run only on legacy modes?

it means they've tested 100 ps4 games and almost all of them are playable. The statement is what it is

AllChan7 · Mar 19, 2020

Linkeds2 said:
it means they've tested 100 ps4 games and almost all of them are playable. The statement is what it is

Alright. Thats fine by me. I never expected every PS4 game to be BC day 1

JaseC64 · Mar 19, 2020

AllChan7 said:
So are only 100 titles fully BC at launch with more titles added as time goes on?

Or

Are 100 titles fully BC for boost mode while the others run only on legacy modes?

Here is how I interpret it.

They play tested the most popular games (top 100) and most of those are running well through their ps4 bc mode. This does not mean these have enhancements.

We have yet to learn about their enhancement program. For example for recent titles such as Part2 runnig at native 4k on ps5 while being checkered board on ps4 pro. Something like that may happen or be announced later this year but this is not what was meant during this video.

KoopaTheCasual · Mar 19, 2020

Man... that's really disappointing. I remember when the hope was PS5 would be the All-in-One Playstation device that could brute force at least PS1 and PS2 titles, in addition to full PS4 backwards compatibility.

prodyg · Mar 19, 2020

sjackso3 said:
All of this has me really leaning heavily towards buying XSX at launch. It just seems more complete. I may still get the PS5 later once some titles come out that are exclusive to it.

that's my approach too, im gonna own them both regardless but MS is doing a much better job with the messaging and are delivering, so far, on their claims.

AllChan7 · Mar 19, 2020

JaseC64 said:
Here is how I interpret it.

They play tested the most popular games (top 100) and most of those are running well through their ps4 bc mode. This does not mean these have enhancements.

We have yet to learn about their enhancement program. For example for recent titles such as Part2 runnig at native 4k on ps5 while being checkered board on ps4 pro. Something like that may happen or be announced later this year but this is not what was meant during this video.

I really hope we get something like Xbox's Smart Delivery more so than anything.

StreamedHams · Mar 19, 2020

Maxey said:
No chance of PS5 enhancement patches?

Man, this is less than what I was expecting...

Sorry, it's just too fast.

Astral · Mar 19, 2020

Here's hoping most of my games can run.

newmoneytrash · Mar 19, 2020

not having legacy BC is so disappointing. it was the only thing that was going to get me to buy a PS5 at launch

Megatron · Mar 19, 2020

Cipherr said:
Alright so after looking at the video... Top 100 will be ready, more will come over the lifetime. Not the best solution but itll do. At least the previous gen needs to be supported. Im not going to count them off for not supporting PS321. Thats just silly at this point IMO. Previous gen needs to be there though, especially when the first year of software for all consoles is lean in comparison to the middle meaty years.

Not having full backwards compat is unfortunate but at least it will come eventually. Thats just fine. Doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

the much bigger deal is if the old games truly aren't getting performance boosts from the new hardware. That can't be true, can it?

TCG276 · Mar 19, 2020

Scottoest said:
I'm sure they will continue to expand the list over time (assuming Sony has a dedicated team to this now, like Microsoft does), but it's a pretty big comedown from the assumption that all PS4/Xbox One games would "just work" on the next generation of consoles. And that's before we even begin to talk about PS 1-3 games.

Actually, MS is making the claim that all Xbox One games will just work ok next gen.

Liabe Brave · Mar 19, 2020

AllChan7 said:
So are only 100 titles fully BC at launch with more titles added as time goes on?

Or

Are 100 titles fully BC for boost mode while the others run only on legacy modes?

Neither interpretation is 100% certain. For example, the blog post directly states the former. But the GitHub leak and the slide during the presentation indicate that legacy modes run as exactly like prior hardware as possible. It doesn't make sense that nearly every game would fail to run anyway. (Especially since Sony say AMD worked hard at compatibility for years.)

RoninStrife · Mar 19, 2020

I cant understand why they couldn't get more than a hundred titles ready for launch.
From a business standpoint.. the more people or the the more efficient you work, the faster it takes to add bc Compatibility. So... either they get more people working on it.. or they add more games at a snails pace. Not liking their strategy behind this.
By this logic.. "top 100 PS4 games"...
How many Fifa's are in there?
Fifa 15,16,17,19,20?
Then... a game like Mortal Kombat X will be BC Compatible as it released years ago, but not Mortal Kombat 11 that released last year? (purely based on hours played over years rather than the sequel that just released a year ago?)

Bluelote · Mar 19, 2020

if you look at how PS4 Pro handled the compatibility with PS4 (more of a hardware mode) and how the XBO X did with the the XBO, I think it's clear that MS has a better software solution for backwards and forwards compatibility for it then Sony, so not a huge surprise, but a shame regardless.

matrix-cat · Mar 19, 2020

Yeah, that sucks. Yesterday I would have guessed the reasonable expectation would be full PS4 compatibility with no enhancements, with the pie-in-the-sky option being maybe some kind of enhancement/patches on a case-by-case basis. Now it's the top 100 games should be playable, and I'm guessing enhancements are out of the picture for the time being at least.

I wasn't going to get my hopes up for Bloodborne at 4K/60 on day one, but with the way they'd been talking about BC up until now I definitely expected more than this. It really seems like they're years behind where Microsoft is on this, and considering that Microsoft's BC program has garnered them so much praise it's hard to understand why Sony wouldn't have made this a priority long ago.

endlessflood · Mar 19, 2020

Bluelote said:
if you look at how PS4 Pro handled the compatibility with PS4 (more of a hardware mode) and how the XBO X did with the the XBO, I think it's clear that MS has a better software solution for backwards and forwards compatibility for it then Sony, so not a huge surprise, but a shame regardless.

Sony allows for more 'coding to the metal' than Microsoft's more abstracted setup. The lower level hardware access can pay dividends within that generation, but it also makes guaranteeing backwards compatibility a lot tougher. It means a lot more testing is required.

Raonak · Mar 19, 2020

It was kinda confusing. Does that mean that they only have 100 games working on an enhanced mode, or 100 games in ps4 mode?

Kapryov · Mar 19, 2020

This is tremendously disappointing if true, though the wording is bizarre and unclear.
If I'm taking the one sentence at face value, out of context, almost 100 of the most played PS4 games will be available to play on PS5 at launch (and presumably some of the least played shoved in there too, those don't get counted).

I want to be in with both of the ultra HD consoles next gen, but if full PS4 BC is dropped then I can't pack that one away for a while, and there's no room for both. PS5 might just have to wait a few years.

Still hyped to see what new stuff they announce though, don't get me wrong, it's still early days.

Liabe Brave · Mar 19, 2020

RoninStrife said:
By this logic.. "top 100 PS4 games"...
How many Fifa's are in there?
Fifa 15,16,17,19,20?
Then... a game like Mortal Kombat X will be BC Compatible as it released years ago, but not Mortal Kombat 11 that released last year? (purely based on hours played over years rather than the sequel that just released a year ago?)

I doubt they'd base it on total time over all years. That would automatically favor the oldest games. Rather, I suspect they took a much smaller segment like "during 2020" or something, to capture the most popular right now.

BreakAtmo · Mar 19, 2020

Nerokis said:
so,

he talks about how the PS5's GPU is backwards compatible with the PS4, saying that the PS4 and PS4 Pro's logic become available in backwards compatibility modes

after explaining that it took years of effort to accomplish that "unification of functionality, as any roadmap advancement creates a potential divergence in logic," he brings up, without missing a beat, that the PS5's boosted frequencies also add complexity to running PS4 games on the system

all of this is in the context of discussing the PS5's backwards compatibility generally, with no specific reference ever being made to anything resembling a Boost Mode, so yeah, I think there's plenty of ambiguity - particularly taking into consideration that your "relative to the 800 and 911Mhz original clocks" idea doesn't actually come up anywhere, in any form, as far as I can tell

I agree with Chris Kohler's interpretation, tbh:

oh, and for anyone who wants to do their own Parsing of Cerny, here's the relevant portion of his presentation:

Like I said, we already know from the Github leak that the legacy modes use the lower clocks. The presentation itself is confusing, as I said, but once you add in that leaked information it is perfectly obvious what he was talking about. "Boosted frequencies" is not some unique proprietary term, it can mean different things in different contexts, and in this case it's in the context of boosting the clocks from what they are in the Legacy Modes.

You also have yet to explain why, if increased frequencies interfered with compatibility, they would force them rather than offering an option more accurate to the original hardware. The answer is that they wouldn't force them, and they would offer that more accurate option - that's what the Legacy Modes are for.

Rurunaki · Mar 19, 2020

Bloodborne has to be within those "100" games they tested right? Right?!

Edward850 · Mar 19, 2020

PS5 is too fast for certain titles though and cannot be handled due to their code which is why they need to be tested and tweaked individually to ensure they're playable but results have been "excellent".

Any other developers got any good speculation as to how this could be? This isn't 1990 and we aren't timing things like we did with 80286 CPUs anymore, and we sure aren't dependent on vblank timers either. The only possible thing I could think of is some engines somehow dodging race conditions in parallel processing without proper synchronization but that seems like a dangerous issue even on correct hardware to have floating around.

Roshin · Mar 19, 2020

newmoneytrash said:
not having legacy BC is so disappointing. it was the only thing that was going to get me to buy a PS5 at launch

Yes, it was a big disappointment. I thought having full PS4 BC from the start was a given.

Deleted member 20297 · Mar 19, 2020

modiz said:
isnt this the same case as the ps4 pro, when boost mode came out they warned of potential issues with unpatched games.

The Pro was very similar to the base PS4 while PS5 is not, no matter how much they try to match clock speeds.

Deleted member 23381 · Mar 19, 2020

Man, why hype it up so much then, disappointing.

Mars People · Mar 19, 2020

The PS5 being to fast to run PS4 games makes no sense at all.

Outtrigger888 · Mar 19, 2020

As long as all the Sony first party games are back compat day 1 I'll be happy. I ended up shifting my 3rd party game library over to the Xbox economy when the X came out.

Fairxchange · Mar 19, 2020

dynamitejim said:
This system is a straight up disaster design-wise. If it's over $399 I'll be very disappointed.

Lol, how so?

MistahShowtime · Mar 19, 2020

So, the console specs are so good that older games won't run on it simply because they couldn't handle such advanced tech? Am I understanding that correctly? Do PS4 games still work but just not boosted or is it only some work and some don't?

RoninStrife · Mar 19, 2020

Liabe Brave said:
I doubt they'd base it on total time over all years. That would automatically favor the oldest games. Rather, I suspect they took a much smaller segment like "during 2020" or something, to capture the most popular right now.

Thats what Im hoping. Not the smartest way for them to have worded that in the presentation.

matrix-cat · Mar 19, 2020

Rurunaki said:
Bloodborne has to be within those "100" games they tested right? Right?!

It has to be on the list, but the question is whether we're talking PS4 Pro Boost Mode Bloodborne or standard PS4 frame-pacing issues Bloodborne.

bane833 · Mar 19, 2020

KoopaTheCasual said:
Man... that's really disappointing. I remember when the hope was PS5 would be the All-in-One Playstation device that could brute force at least PS1 and PS2 titles, in addition to full PS4 backwards compatibility.

There was never any hope for that in the first place. The half assed PS4 BC is indeed disappointing though.

LJKO · Mar 19, 2020

newmoneytrash said:
not having legacy BC is so disappointing. it was the only thing that was going to get me to buy a PS5 at launch

I guess I can wait 1 or 2 years on buying a PS5 and put that money toward something else 1st or save up. I was planning to trade my PS4 in for PS5 due to BC but PS4 is not even fully BC at launch T_T. Well i'll see how this plays out and what those Top 100 games are before I decide if I want it at launch or not; Also those PS5 launch titles will play a role too

ItsBobbyDarin · Mar 19, 2020

If my iPhone can run PSX games, then so can the PS5. This is a priority discussion. And I don't get the "PS5 is too fast". What does that even mean?

apocat · Mar 19, 2020

newmoneytrash said:
not having legacy BC is so disappointing. it was the only thing that was going to get me to buy a PS5 at launch

Agreed. I'm not sure I really believed it would happen, but support for the ps1 and 2 would have made me buy it on day one. I'm sick of how consoles are just discarded after a few years. My old ps2 broke down a while ago, rendering a lot of old favourites unplayable, and I'd have to gamble on a used console to be able to play those games again.

As it is now, I'll wait and see how they handle PSVR. That platform is the main thing that's kept me invested in playstation these last few years.

Bishop89 · Mar 19, 2020

I haven't watched the cerny-show yet, but was it specified if it's both physical/digital B/C or just digital?

Nerokis · Mar 19, 2020

BreakAtmo said:
Like I said, we already know from the Github leak that the legacy modes use the lower clocks. The presentation itself is confusing, as I said, but once you add in that leaked information it is perfectly obvious what he was talking about. "Boosted frequencies" is not some unique proprietary term, it can mean different things in different contexts, and in this case it's in the context of boosting the clocks from what they are in the Legacy Modes.

You also have yet to explain why, if increased frequencies interfered with compatibility, they would force them rather than offering an option more accurate to the original hardware. The answer is that they wouldn't force them, and they would offer that more accurate option - that's what the Legacy Modes are for.

it's pretty amusing to me that, even after all this, you still think it's "unambiguous" and "perfectly obvious" that he was referring to a Boost Mode

even though nothing resembling a Boost Mode was ever mentioned, he brought up boosted frequencies also adding complexity in the context of how difficult it was to achieve their backwards compatibility solution, nothing about ending that backwards compatibility segment with "...we expect most [of the top 100 PS4 games] to be playable at launch on the Playstation 5" implies anything Boost Mode-specific, and their official blog seems to point in the complete opposite direction

should also point out that "legacy modes" and "backwards compatibility modes" were used interchangeably: that's where the logic and feature set of the PS4/PS4 Pro become available, as Cerny explained, and are not necessarily intended as an alternative to some unmentioned Boost Mode

as for that last point: explaining that would require knowing exactly what it means, in practice, to achieve "a unification of functionality" by integrating the necessary PS4/PS4 Logic directly into the PS5's custom chips, and i do no not

anyway, i still see some room for your interpretation, but again, damn how bad would the messaging have had to have been

endlessflood · Mar 19, 2020

ItsBobbyDarin said:
And I don't get the "PS5 is too fast". What does that even mean?

I assume they're talking about a PS5 Boost mode, where they're trying to take advantage of the better hardware even beyond the PS4 Pro mode for even better performance than on PS4 Pro.

You might recall that they were initially quite subdued in talking about PS4 Pro boost mode too, despite the fact that I think barely any games had an issue with it (SOMA is the only one I even remember, and they patched it).

But Sony have said sweet fuck all about backwards compatibility specifics, so I'm just guessing.

ActusReusJB · Mar 19, 2020

matrix-cat said:
Yeah, that sucks. Yesterday I would have guessed the reasonable expectation would be full PS4 compatibility with no enhancements, with the pie-in-the-sky option being maybe some kind of enhancement/patches on a case-by-case basis. Now it's the top 100 games should be playable, and I'm guessing enhancements are out of the picture for the time being at least.

In another thread I posted an article from US Gamer with the developers of Dreams commenting on how they were testing PS5 compatibility. Immediately I went to the same conclusion, why would they need to test this? The expectation is everything works. Like you I am very disappointed.

Unchaotisch · Mar 19, 2020

That one really suprised me yesterday. I never thought PS1–3 BC was realistic, but PS4 BC seemed like such an obvious thing to have. Hopefully they can sort this out until launch, because not having complete BC with PS4 is a big deal.

And I don't buy that "PS5 is too fast for BC" talking point. Come on, that's just PR spin.

Deleted member 20297 · Mar 19, 2020

I just thought about it: With XSX, you have access to all the gamepass games you have access to now because every Xbox One game will work on XSX. For PSNow, they introduced downloading PS4 games but as the games supported seem to be limited, the service itself is largely back to streaming these games instead of being able to
a) render them natively with no additional input delay and
b) also not boosted and perhaps even enhanced like it will happen on XSX.

4 Get! · Mar 19, 2020

aspiring said:
I have been buying so many games digitally and the like on PS4, BECAUSE they said it would be BC so I'm hoping for full.

I have foolishly done the same, and if it turns out way worse than expected I might bite the bullet and deal with finally needing to build and consistently upgrade a gaming PC.

Tetra-Grammaton-Cleric · Mar 19, 2020

Roshin said:
Yes, it was a big disappointment. I thought having full PS4 BC from the start was a given.

That's what most of us assumed, especially with MS basically allowing the XB1 library to transfer over without a hitch, but apparently that's not going to happen with Sony which sucks because I thought I could get rid of my current systems and offset the price of new hardware without losing access to my digital library.

Jimrpg · Mar 19, 2020

BC the only thing that will make me get a PS5 right now.

blitzblake · Mar 19, 2020

:Edit

Champion · Mar 19, 2020

The PS5 is too fast for some titles??? What does that even mean?

Expy · Mar 19, 2020

blitzblake said:
Ok here is the word for word transcript from the presentation;

So my interpretation of that is yes, in legacy mode, the PS5 will play all PS4 games in the same way a PS4 currently plays those games.

And here is the bit about the 100 games

The 100 games are only for the Boosted Mode/Enchanced/ whatever you want to call them. So yes, most likely, Bloodborne is included and is being tested at running at enhanced boosted mode on the PS5 (aka better frame rates and better load times).

That was my understanding from the presentation as well.

PlayStation 4 Backwards Compatability for PS5 won't be 100% at launch, PS5 too fast for some titles, tweaks and testing on game-by-game basis

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