PS5 Backwards Compatibility With PS3 Games Turns Out To Be Just A Bug

PS5 backwards compatibility only supports PS4 games as of the moment. That doesn't count all of the PS3 and PS2 titles you can play on Sony's new console via their streaming service, PS Now. But PlayStation 5 owners woke up surprised to see PS3 games on their consoles' storefronts nonetheless.

Unfortunately, it was all a mere mistake. According to DualShockers, the PS3 games that recently appeared on the PlayStation Store's PS5 storefront are caused by a bug.

A few popular titles from the seventh generation, like "Prince of Persia Sands of Time" and "Dead or Alive 5" allegedly appeared in the store. Players couldn't buy the games at all, but they looked "believable" enough that it fueled wild speculations.

Twitter user Ryan Biniecki was quick to point out that while this may look promising, it's a bug that's actually affected Sony's digital storefront multiple times before:

Originally, old games appearing on the store will have the PlayStation Now logo beside them. If you click on the title card, it will usually redirect you to a free trial page for PS Now, writes GamesRadar.

However, there have been rumors that Sony is working on something to rival Xbox Game Pass, codenamed Spartacus. PlayStation Now gift cards were recently ordered to be phased out in the UK, ahead of a rumored major overhaul to the service.

As such, this visual bug has once again prompted fans to wildly speculate that Sony is going to start offering older games on the PlayStation 5 natively, instead of just having players stream them over the cloud--something Game Pass has been doing for a while.

Sony has not commented on this news yet.

Why PS5 Backwards Compatibility For PS3 Games Might Not Come--At Least Not yet

There is a good reason why Sony hasn't offered full backwards compatibility for PS3 games on the PS5. The hardware is just so different during the jump from the seventh generation (PS3 era) to the eighth (PS4 era).

Before old PS3 games could become available on the PS5, they'll have to be reworked from the ground up, which will take a considerable amount of time and resources that Sony might not be willing to spend.

That's because the PlayStation 3's hardware is far more alien to that of the PS4's, which in turn is very similar to that of the PlayStation 5's as they're both very PC-like consoles.

This fact, however, really doesn't mean that Sony will not consider the idea, since Xbox is already doing it. Xbox's backwards compatibility tech makes use of emulators that make more modern consoles "think" they're older-generation ones (via Pocket-Lint), which enables them to run games from as far back as the OG Xbox era.

If the Series X and Series S (which have almost identical specs to the PS5) can run these emulators to play old games, then there's no good reason why Sony's competing console couldn't. But only time will tell at this point.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by RJ Pierce