This past week Sony put out a presentation detailing its technical plans for the PS5. During the presentation, Sony touched on the PS5's backward compatibility functionality. To PlayStation fans' worry, all that was said about games was that virtually all of the top 100 most-played PS4 games would run on PS5 at launch. Sony's now issued an update to clarify some misinformation that's spread since.
The misconception that Sony is trying to correct is that only the top 100 PS4 games are being worked on for the PS5Â and no others. That isn't accurate. Sony's now saying that it believes the "overwhelming majority" of the PS4's library will be playable on PS5. Considering the library of PS4 games is over 4,000 strong, thousands of PS4 titles will work via backward compatibility. Sony notably did not say whether they would be playable at launch, though.
The misconception is understandable. The problem is that Sony has to test each individual game to ensure it works on the PS5. PS4 games on PS5 will be utilizing more powerful hardware, and many games aren't designed to account for that or scale up along with the hardware. Sony's comments during the presentation show that it has confirmed that almost all of the top 100 most-played PS4 games will work on PS5 at launch with no problem.
Sony confirmed that it has done this testing for PS4 games outside of the top 100 most-played, but only "hundreds" and not thousands. Sony assumes that most of these games will work without issue, but can't say this with 100% certainty until the games are tested, which is why it wasn't clarified during the presentation. That's why Sony felt the need to offer more details after there was confusion.
Sony will continue to put out updates on PS5 backward compatibility "in the months ahead." This will likely include more testing information for the remaining thousands of untested PS4 games, as well as details about which games do not now and if there's an effort to fix that.
It's important to acknowledge that the PS5 presentation from Mark Cerny was not intended to necessarily be a promotional event for the upcoming console. The presentation was planned for the Game Developers Conference 2020 before it was canceled due to the coronavirus. Backward compatibility was only intended to be discussed in the context of how it worked on the PS5. Hopefully, that helps people understand the confusion.
The PS5 is planned to launch holiday 2020.
