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PlayStation Support: Backward compatibility: PlayStation®4 games playable on PlayStation®5

thelastword

Banned
Select games will enable boost mode isn't good news. I thought they would have boost enabled all the time like Series X
PRO has a boost mode toggle in the OS. I'm sure PS5 will be the same. From my understanding all games will get a boost under PS5 in some way. The boost many people want to know about are for the games that will get patched or the games that are utlizing dynamic resolution and unlocked framerates. I think there will be quite a few games patched. At least the most popular games....
Select PS4 games will benefit from the PS5 console’s Game Boost

There is a difference. If the framerate is locked how can the game benefit?
The rez can benefit, the AF, the AA as well....I'm still hoping that Sony releases a auto-frame-cap/resolution buster with a do at your own risk disclaimer.......It was always how I saw BC would be best. Yet I can understand why Sony wouldn't do it. People would tick that box and if they see any glitches or something goes wrong, they would be online launching crusades against evil Sony breaking their games....It's a rock and hard place in this gaming industry...
It stuck to me your usual concern trolling.
So the many people overly concerned about BC and it's importance, now only 10 games are not compatible and who knows, they may eventually be compatible too.....But no, people now decide to complain about keeping a disc in a console for games they deemed was so important for them to play on PS5.......So if not the disk for authentication, it means the console would have to be online to play BC and I'm sure these same persons would bring a bigger pitchfork mob saying "I can't play my BC games offline, that's total BS"....The cycle continues obviously...
f1b2df2d0b218af92ed6c3159ccf3b18.gif
Is anyone upset that a digital console can't play disc games? I would not be surprised if some bring up that argument....Anti-consumer antics clearly....Why release a disc-less system, you are keeping gamers from accessing borrowed discs or UHD blurays.....It's shut-out culture and segregationism.... :rolleyes:
Very glad the concern trolling and FUD around PS5/PS4 BC will be finally be over.
You think? There is always something, just look at some of the comments....


Anyways, great job from Sony as expected....I think there are even more details on BC that is tied to the OS, so perhaps when we get the OS video, we will see how it works in action. See a few of the patched and boosted games etc......countdown to PS5 is ramping up, I'm glad Sony has left somethings back and not spewed all it's load from day 1. With the next 4 weeks till launch, I'm sure they will have something interesting to share.....This is probably the most well thought out launch I've seen from them, they've been really strategic with their information sharing and timeliness of it...
 

yurinka

Member
Something I am not sure of:

On PS4 Pro, the boost option is system level and can be turned on, this 'boosts' all PS4 games played on Pro. They have a caveat that if any issues arise whilst playing a specific game, then turn off boost mode.

On PS5, it seems boost option wont be available and instead Sony will 'switch on' boost mode for PS4 games that can run with it (maybe adding more as tested over time). I would expect quite a lot will run in boost mode and especially the popular games (in top 100+).
I understand that all games that run on PS5 BC will have access to Game Boost. PS blog says this:

What is the PS4 game experience like on PS5?
"PS4 titles get even better on PS5. Select PS4 titles will see increased loading speeds on the PS5 console, and will also leverage Game Boost, offering improved or more stable frame rates. Some titles with unlocked frame rates or dynamic resolution up to 4K may see higher fidelity. Additionally, PS4 games will also take advantage of some of PS5’s new UX features, but more to come on that later."

The support page says this:

"Select PS4 games will benefit from the PS5 console’s Game Boost, which may make PS4 games run with a higher or smoother frame rate."

I understand they say that Game Boost is activated for all BC games, but some of them already were running in PS4 Pro at steady capped 30 or 60fps, so can't benefit with a fps increase, and games without dynamic resolution or already running at native 4K on PS4 Pro won't benefit of a resolution increase. But not because they have Game Boost is disabled, but because the game already achieved the 4K or 60fps limit on PS4 Pro, or because the games don't have unlocked fps or dynamic resolution. So they will only benefited with shorter loading times.
 
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yurinka

Member
In the PS support page it mentioned ps plus and PSNOW .. they state that ps4 games will play on ps5... they only mention that ps4 titles will be playable on ps5.. do I assume that over 1/2 the psnow library will be cut out from being playable on ps5?? Surely not...

and no this is not some trolling post. I have psnow and love it but that will definitely make me reconsider resubscribing if true
They said:

"What about PS4 games on PS Now and PS Plus?
Backward compatible PS4 games included in PS Plus or PS Now will run on PS5."

None of the 'PS4 only games' are included in PS Plus or PS Now, so you'll be able to download and play in a PS5 all your PS4 games from PS Plus and PS Now that were downloadable to play them locally on PS4 (so PS4 games, PS4 remasters or remakes of PS1/PS2/PS3 games and PS2 classics). Plus you'll obviously able to play via streaming the entire PS Now catalog.

PS5 is BC with PS4, so with only these 10 games as exception you'll be able to play all your PS4 games on PS5. Doesn't matter if you purchased on disc (if you have a PS5 with disc drive), digitally or if you have access to them because you're a PS Plus or PS Now subscription.
 
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T-Cake

Member
The latest DF video showed that not only the SSD improves load times in BC games, but the next gen CPU makes a huge difference also. So any games not boosted will possibly not see the big improvements in load times due to not running at PS5 CPU speeds. I'm not too worried about this as the PS4 games I will play on PS5 are popular and should be boosted.

There could be a difference in the way the APIs are used between Xbox and PS5. Microsoft have kept the old I/O APIs there for BC purposes, so all the BC games will use those and not Velocity Architecture. But the CPU helps with loading as well as the fast nature of SSD.

On PS5, Sony could have overwritten the old I/O APIs with the new one. So even old games can fully utilize the super fast SSD speed, even if the CPU is restricted in frequency. So it could all work out nicely in the end.
 

Shmunter

Member
Yeah but I wonder if it will get a Patch for boost mode.

Not ray tracing, new textures etc. Like the “Remaster” .
But Just faster loading and 60fps option like PS4 Pro games got the option.
I doubt it but wondering if they will give it a free patch. Like Cerny said the top 100 games will be get a boost mode.
Not just games after June ETc like Ghost of Tsushima
They could do it overnight. But will they give fresh life to a game already sold if they want to sell it again? This is the conundru, and Sony has shown their hand.
 
There's a lot of pages here, any info on why is says select games will benefit from faster loading times ? Should be all of them, no?
 
There's a lot of pages here, any info on why is says select games will benefit from faster loading times ? Should be all of them, no?

Just replacing the HDD with an SSD in a PS4/PS4 Pro yields benefits. I don't know why the same couldn't be applied to PS4 games on the PS5. It's not like the console is going to emulate the slow HDD or anything.

However games taking full advantage of the PS5s I/O is a different story.
 
There's a lot of pages here, any info on why is says select games will benefit from faster loading times ? Should be all of them, no?

Sony is taking a blacklist approach to backward compatibility in that all games will “work” except for a curated list that they will probably maintain going forward. They aren’t testing every aspect of every game. So the disclaimer is that there may be bugs or problems.

For loading times and other enhancements they are taking a whitelist approach and only commenting on games they know will have benefits. There is no way to guarantee a dev didn’t create a game in such a way that loading times might not improve, and since they aren't testing every game they won’t make a blanket statement about enhancements like that.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Sony is taking a blacklist approach to backward compatibility in that all games will “work” except for a curated list that they will probably maintain going forward. They aren’t testing every aspect of every game. So the disclaimer is that there may be bugs or problems.

For loading times and other enhancements they are taking a whitelist approach and only commenting on games they know will have benefits. There is no way to guarantee a dev didn’t create a game in such a way that loading times might not improve, and since they aren't testing every game they won’t make a blanket statement about enhancements like that.

Actually it seems that boost mode compatibility will at least initially be locked behind a whitelist stored in the OS and updated over time. The difficult part is that even if they clock down to the same frequencies as the PS4/Pro there are going to be differences anyway due to the IPC and overall efficiency of Ryzen being way higher than Jaguar.

Obviously they know that every title that passed through cert after Pro compatibility became mandatory is a far better candidate for full boosting than stuff submitted before, so I'd suspect they'll pasre through that list as a priority while cherry-picking at earlier titles.
 

Trogdor1123

Member
Can some one recommend me a 1tb SSD drive n an enclosure? I assume the digital foundry video on the Xbox will be the same (or at least close) on ps5.
 
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Vae_Victis

Banned
There's a lot of pages here, any info on why is says select games will benefit from faster loading times ? Should be all of them, no?
It's not clear, but I would assume it might be connected to boost mode, since it's mentioned immediately afterwards. It's possible that boost mode also uncaps the transfer speed to what the PS5 SSD can do, while in legacy mode the speeds are kept artificially closer to those you would see on a PS4, since in some cases it's possible a very drastic jump in how quickly data are being moved during certain particular sequences or events might break or mess with the game code (for example, if some other data is "pushed out" of RAM much faster than the developers originally intended).

This is all just my speculation though, no clarification from Sony as far as I know.
 
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playedbloodborne on SSD onps4 and pro and Load times were definitely faster than others at the time. It’s been a while but I could load it up and try a few and time it.
You are correct, it is significantly faster with a Pro and a SSD. It is one of the few games, which also includes Monster Hunter, where the load time difference is night and day.

My continuing theory is that those games are being bottlenecked by the seek times of the mechanical hard drive, not the throughput. Since SSD seek time is crazy fast they would see a huge improvement, even if the console isn't taking advantage of the SSD's true throughput.
 

FrankWza

Member
You are correct, it is significantly faster with a Pro and a SSD. It is one of the few games, which also includes Monster Hunter, where the load time difference is night and day.

My continuing theory is that those games are being bottlenecked by the seek times of the mechanical hard drive, not the throughput. Since SSD seek time is crazy fast they would see a huge improvement, even if the console isn't taking advantage of the SSD's true throughput.

Back on GT5 on ps3 was when I discovered how much of an improvement an SSD could be on a console. Even when not optimized for it. That’s why I spent on a Samsun evo day 1 for PS4.When I hear the new drive mentioned with load times I kind of laugh because that’s a given at this point and that’s why I mentioned quite a few times how the SSD in the ps5 will be amazing beyond that considering it is optimized AND will help the overall system power too. That makes me expect that, even if every game isn’t upgraded initially, it won’t be hard to give it a boost mode treatment down the road.
 
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KevinHelpUs

Neo Member
Glad to see they're taking backwards compatibility more seriously now. Not as seriously as they were in the days of the fat PS3, but I love going back and revisiting my old catalog.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Amazing work by modding community. I hope Sony can at least duplicate it.

Unfortunately its really not up to Sony, as they wouldn't be the ones tasked with updating the code, that'd be FROM. And if they are otherwise occupied, say everyone working on Elden Ring, there's not much that can be said.

Bear in mind dusting off years-old code-bases, rebuilding them and their assets then running and testing for changes is not a 5 minute job. Especially as not everyone familiar with what needs to be fixed is going to be available, or even still employed by the company.
 

Self

Member
Bear in mind dusting off years-old code-bases, rebuilding them and their assets then running and testing for changes is not a 5 minute job.
Is this really nessesary just to uncap the framerate? I thought it's just a line of code or something. Silly me...
 
Unfortunately its really not up to Sony, as they wouldn't be the ones tasked with updating the code, that'd be FROM. And if they are otherwise occupied, say everyone working on Elden Ring, there's not much that can be said.

Bear in mind dusting off years-old code-bases, rebuilding them and their assets then running and testing for changes is not a 5 minute job. Especially as not everyone familiar with what needs to be fixed is going to be available, or even still employed by the company.
All you said is true but at the same time Bloodborne is considered to be one of the finest exclusives on PS4 (if not the finest), so it would make sense for Sony to get involved. And if random people in the modding community can achieve such results, then it's not outside of realm of possibilities to consider developing such a patch.

Question remains: do Sony care about preservation of their flagship games?
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Is this really nessesary just to uncap the framerate? I thought it's just a line of code or something. Silly me...

Even if you have meticulously archived your code-base and assets, if the build environment has changed, dependencies like libraries and whatnot updated, it can be a painful thing just recompiling what you had.

Once you have managed to rebuild the executable successfully, then you need to find the code that needs updating which most likely will be in multiple locations in multiples of files, rebuild and test. Then you need to do all the paperwork to resubmit it to Sony and wait for the corporate wheels to turn.

The truth is that hobbyists have a harder job in terms of having to just work with minimally commented decompiled code, but they are free from a lot of the shackles that are a necessity in a professional environment.
 

AgentP

Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
There's a lot of pages here, any info on why is says select games will benefit from faster loading times ? Should be all of them, no?

Anything on the SSD will, even on an ext HD the faster CPU and memory will probably help some too.
 

yurinka

Member
There's a lot of pages here, any info on why is says select games will benefit from faster loading times ? Should be all of them, no?
The SSD should work in the same way for all BC games, so they should get the same proportional loading times benefit. Maybe with 'select' they mean 'all PS4+PSVR that are compatible with PS5 BC' or 'games that in PS4 had relatively long loading times because the reduction times will be more noticiable, games that already had 5 seconds of loading time we may reduce it in 4 seconds, so since the difference of total time is too small we don't count it as 'select' game'.

Anything on the SSD will, even on an ext HD the faster CPU and memory will probably help some too.
Yep, PS5 uses USB 3.1 gen 2 (1212 MB/s) and that Series X and PS4/PS4 Pro uses USB 3.1 gen 1 (500 MB/s). This should mean that to have an external SSD or HDD should be faster in PS5 than in PS4 or Series X|S.

Unfortunately its really not up to Sony, as they wouldn't be the ones tasked with updating the code, that'd be FROM. And if they are otherwise occupied, say everyone working on Elden Ring, there's not much that can be said.

Bear in mind dusting off years-old code-bases, rebuilding them and their assets then running and testing for changes is not a 5 minute job. Especially as not everyone familiar with what needs to be fixed is going to be available, or even still employed by the company.
True, but if Sony wants to do it and From is busy, very likely they can outsource it to someone else. I don't know, maybe even someone from that Bluepoint/Sony Japan who did work on Demon's Souls who already should be familiar with old From Software stuff (well, way older).

I think it's worth it, because to have a 4K 60fps Bloodborne with basically no loading times would be so awesome and appealing to all these PS5 users who didn't have PS4 may be interested on it.

Glad to see they're taking backwards compatibility more seriously now. Not as seriously as they were in the days of the fat PS3, but I love going back and revisiting my old catalog.
PS5 BC supports basically the whole PS4+PSVR catalog, which wasn't the case of the PS3 BC (I had one of these), it had a way smaller % of games.
 
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tuco11

Member
Probably wishingful thinking but (assuming Skyrim is back compat on PS5 ) any chance of load times being cut in half?
 
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GiJoint

Member
This is really good, looking forward to boost.

I’d love to pull out my copy of Just Cause 3 and stress test that on the PS5, that was a Jaguar cpu killer that one.
 

KevinHelpUs

Neo Member
The SSD should work in the same way for all BC games, so they should get the same proportional loading times benefit. Maybe with 'select' they mean 'all PS4+PSVR that are compatible with PS5 BC' or 'games that in PS4 had relatively long loading times because the reduction times will be more noticiable, games that already had 5 seconds of loading time we may reduce it in 4 seconds, so since the difference of total time is too small we don't count it as 'select' game'.


Yep, PS5 uses USB 3.1 gen 2 (1212 MB/s) and that Series X and PS4/PS4 Pro uses USB 3.1 gen 1 (500 MB/s). This should mean that to have an external SSD or HDD should be faster in PS5 than in PS4 or Series X|S.


True, but if Sony wants to do it and From is busy, very likely they can outsource it to someone else. I don't know, maybe even someone from that Bluepoint/Sony Japan who did work on Demon's Souls who already should be familiar with old From Software stuff (well, way older).

I think it's worth it, because to have a 4K 60fps Bloodborne with basically no loading times would be so awesome and appealing to all these PS5 users who didn't have PS4 may be interested on it.


PS5 BC supports basically the whole PS4+PSVR catalog, which wasn't the case of the PS3 BC (I had one of these), it had a way smaller % of games.

Really? I could run anything from my PS1 & 2 collection on my PS3 BC, but maybe the only games I tried were compatible?
 

yurinka

Member
Really? I could run anything from my PS1 & 2 collection on my PS3 BC, but maybe the only games I tried were compatible?
I had the fat PS3 with the biggest compatibility list (it did change depending on the PS3 SKU) and even after all the updates where they added or fixed games, the compatibility was way, way smaller than the 99.8% compatibility of PS5.

You couldn't run any PS1 or PS2 game there. Even some important ones weren't compatible or had big issues. As an example, I had a MGS (I think it was a MGS3) that didn't work, while other reeditions of this game did work.

There may be some compatibility lists out there, some more updated than others. Not sure if this one is very updated, but you can see here that some games don't work properly, or simply don't work at all: https://en.everybodywiki.com/List_of_PlayStation_2_games_compatible_with_PlayStation_3
 
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ReBurn

Gold Member
I had the fat PS3 with the biggest compatibility list (it did change depending on the PS3 SKU) and even after all the updates where they added or fixed games, the compatibility was way, way smaller than the 99.8% compatibility of PS5.

You couldn't run any PS1 or PS2 game there. Even some important ones weren't compatible or had big issues. As an example, I had a MGS (I think it was a MGS3) that didn't work, while other reeditions of this game did work.

There may be some compatibility lists out there, some more updated than others. Not sure if this one is very updated, but you can see here that some games don't work properly, or simply don't work at all: https://en.everybodywiki.com/List_of_PlayStation_2_games_compatible_with_PlayStation_3
All of my great PS2 backward compatibility went straight out the window when Sony straight up removed it from PS3. My launch 60 GB got YLOD and Sony wouldn't fix it. So they sent me a PS3 Slim and a free game to make up for it. It did not make up for it.
 

Self

Member
I had the fat PS3 with the biggest compatibility list (it did change depending on the PS3 SKU) and even after all the updates where they added or fixed games, the compatibility was way, way smaller than the 99.8% compatibility of PS5.

True. I remember Capcom Vs SNK was unplayable, because of enormous graphical glitches which were not present on PS2. Tomb Raider Underworld wasn't playable at all, it stuck on bootscreen.
 
SSD loading solution is twice as fast on PS5 compared to Series X, so BC loading times should be shorter in PS5.
It doesn't work like that. The loading speed difference between 2.4 GB/s vs 5.5 GB/s will be negligible because the speed of the drive is not the limiting factor in how fast a game loads.
 

yurinka

Member
It doesn't work like that. The loading speed difference between 2.4 GB/s vs 5.5 GB/s will be negligible because the speed of the drive is not the limiting factor in how fast a game loads.
Well, true. This 2.3x difference is with raw speed.

The PS5 and Series X game also do extra I/O stuff like the compression. When added, Series X goes up to 4.8 GB/s and PS5 to ~8-9GB/s and up to 22GB/s due to better compression and several extra loading from SSD related bottlenecks have been removed in PS5 due to a hardware architecture focused on this. And they are transparent for the devs, don't need to do anything to take advantage of it, so very likely at least part of them are going to be applied to PS5 BC games.

So probably the loading speed difference is going to be way higher than x2.3. But well, who knows. Let's hope they start sending PS5 to the media and we see Series X vs PS5 loading time comparisions for both BC and next gen (even if cross-gen) multis to see real world numbers. Because at least on paper, as of now we only know that both next gen and BC games should load faster on PS5.
 
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clintar

Member
This is some great news, and about what folks were expecting 👍

I'm curious how many of these are compatible with Boost mode; last figure had them having tested about 100 games. It'd be nice if they gave an update on that front with this one but they'll probably do that a week or two from now anyway.

Also this stuck out to me:



Is there a specific reason the game needs to be inserted each and every time? Sounds like a form of license checking, but couldn't they just simply get some kind of unique ID code off the disc, store it to the cloud, and then just have it so that the user needs to briefly be online to verify being able to play the game without the disc being in the drive? Maybe some kind of matching ID could be generated for that game getting initially verified with the disc in the drive on that system, and could even do it on a per-account basis?
There is no way to create a unique I'd since every disc is identical. That's a problem with the mass production. They would have to instead give a code out with each sale and then you can't lend games anymore or have used games at GameStops. And we are back to the pre-previous-gen Microsoft debacle.
 
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