Recently, Sony Japan registered a new patent (filed under 2019-503013) that would allow for compatibility with the PS5 from the PS 1-4.

Hobbyconsolas was one of the first to discover the new patent, and have neatly summarized its capabilities:

The aim is to make the applications designed for the previous consoles (legacy device) run perfectly on the most powerful hardware, and is focused on eliminating the synchronization errors between the new consoles and the behavior of the previous ones (PS4, PS3, PS2 and PSX). For example, if the CPU of the new console is faster than the previous one, data could be overwritten prematurely, even if they were still being used by another component.

Essentially, the PS5 will be able to mimic prior consoles, allowing the PS5 to fool the backward compatible titles by telling them that instead of the PS5 running Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City, it's actually a PS2 running the software instead.

Earlier, we wrote an article explaining another patent from Sony, which would be used older games to be played back at a higher resolution. This would be critical for PS1 and PS2 titles, as their lower resolutions would look particularly bad on a 4K or even a 1080p resolution screen. If older games were upscaled to the point where it wasn't a distraction, Sony could potentially have a library of thousands of games at launch if they implement backward compatibility correctly.

Quick Take:

As someone who never bought a PS4 or Xbox One due to how underpowered they are in comparison to earlier generations, if the PS5 allows backward compatibility all the way back to the PS1 then I will probably buy a PS5 on launch. Now, all we need to know is if Sony will allow cross-play and physical backward compatibility with old titles. Sony could easily sell physical titles in-store (or digitally) as a series bundle, and if they allow online play for older titles, then I would definitely buy a PS5 on launch. We'll see.

What do you think of this new patent? Do you think Sony will finally allow physical copies of older games on the PS5? Let us know in the comments!