We have an interesting new rumor from a source that still has enough credibility intact to keep going.
Shpeshal Nick Baker, who has been sharing rumors on a video podcast, and made no secret of their identity or pretended to be someone they are not, has shared the latest one on the latest episode of the XboxEra podcast. To quote Nick verbatim:
“The rumor that I heard is that Sony is working on select PlayStation 3 backwards compatibility.”
Of course, what he means here is backwards compatibility of PlayStation 3 games on PlayStation 5. As of the moment, it is possible to play some PlayStation 3 games on PlayStation 5, via Sony’s PlayStation Plus cloud streaming service. Although they did not say so directly, it was clear that those games were made available using original PlayStation 3 hardware, set up for the purpose of cloud streaming.
PlayStation 3 backwards compatibility has long been a thorn in the side for Sony, since the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. We do know that if Sony did want to do this from the onset, it was prohibitively expensive to do so.
The PlayStation 3 was built around the Cell, a 64-bit multi-core microprocessor designed by RISC, nearly a decade before the first Ryzen processors came to market. The Cell microprocessor would find uses beyond gaming, such as Toshiba HDTVs, the IBM supercomputer called the RoadRunner, and computer clusters, that were used to simulate black holes. Even the US Air Force ran a PS3 cluster for their own use.
The irony of this was that many developers had a hard time developing games for the PlayStation 3 as a result, leading to very real struggles for many game companies to transition towards the HD era of video games. This difficulty is part of the reason that the eight and ninth generation consoles after it, made by Sony, Microsoft, and now even Nintendo, were deliberately designed to be closer to PCs.
So, the difficulties developers went through at the time were not replicated generation after generation, but Sony got stuck having to figure out how to make their PlayStation 3 games backwards compatible on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Of course, as we know, they didn’t even bother doing so on the PS4 era.
Nintendo faced a similar dilemma when switching over from the Wii U to the Switch. But unlike Sony, Nintendo decided that it would be worth the effort to port their Wii U games to the Switch. They did end up porting or creating sequels (or both) for nearly all their Wii U games to their more successful platform, and that led to not only greater success for their old reliables like Smash Bros and Mario Kart, but the revitalization of franchises like Animal Crossing and Xenoblade Chronicles.
So, if Sony will go the Wii U to Switch route, they are definitely going through their most popular PlayStation 3 games, and hopefully, not simply looking to remake games that they already remade twice over. We could see titles like the original Uncharted trilogy, the first two Infamous games, and God of War Origins make that jump easily.
For some other games, it may not be as clear. Certainly a lot of fans would love to play Resistance, Killzone, and SOCOM, but would Sony do the work to enable multiplayer for those PS3 games on PS5 too? It’s certainly possible they have a cheap and easy to deploy solution, that would be easier than greenlighting another new multiplayer project that wouldn’t release in time for the end of the PS5’s life cycle.
Similarly, Sony does still enjoy close relationships with 3rd parties, but will the money still be worthwhile for Sony to work with 3rd parties for games that will only be on the PlayStation 5? The only way around that would be if Sony planned for these PS3 rereleases to also appear on PC.
But these are our preliminary thoughts on what kinds of games we could even expect if this was true. If Sony has something like this in the works, we likely won’t hear about it until they’re ready to launch.
