It is definitely a big deal to play old games in the quiet period after launch on a next-generation console when you don’t have many new titles for justifying the considerable amount of money spent by you on a new machine. Microsoft and Sony were aware of this while launching their Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 last year, both having improved the backward compatibility features of their consoles.
It has been a long time since these two companies are competing with other console makers on the market, and both of them have built up outstanding back catalogs full of classics. We will see how much of these libraries it will be able to play on the brand-new consoles and how your saves can be transferred by you.
PlayStation 5
Starting at $400, the PlayStation 5 had been designed for PS4 games in particular. According to the company, PS4 titles become much better on PlayStation 5. The loading speeds of selected PS4 titles will become more on the PS5 console, and will also provide more stable or enhanced frame rates. Some titles having a dynamic resolution or unlocked framed rates up to 4K might see enhanced fidelity.
Sucker Punch, the developer of Ghost of Tsushima, provided us with a feeling of how Game Boost functions – you will observe an additional option for enabling frame rates up to 60 frames per second.
A PlayStation 5 optimization patch was released by developer Sony Santa Monica on 2nd February. After it is installed, it will be possible to play at 60 fps and in 4K resolution as well. A list of PlayStation 4 games was also released by the company which one cannot play on PlayStation 5. All these games will be carrying a notification “Playable on PS4 only” in the PlayStation Store so that you do not download them accidentally.
A list of PlayStation 4 games which are not going to work on PlayStation 5 was released by Ubisoft on 30th October. Among these, the most significant one had been Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate of 2015. Afterward, it pulled that particular blog post informing IGN that it might have included some inaccuracies relating to the Ubisoft titles which one can play on PlayStation 5. Since then, gamers have informed that Syndicate is playable in spite of having some graphical bugs.
It will not be imperative for you to stare into the loading screen abyss for long since the transformation to solid-state storage from spinning hard drive will be making them run quicker than what they performed on the PlayStation 4.
In case you make a subscription to PlayStation Plus, you will be able to select PlayStation 4 games that you can play through the PlayStation 5-only Plus Collection at no additional cost from November 12.
Your present DualShock 4 controller can be used by you for playing PlayStation 4 games; however, it will be imperative to make use of the brand-new DualSense for playing PlayStation 5 games. Moreover, PlayStation 5 is not going to be backward-compatible with PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, or PlayStation 1 games.
Transferring saves
It is definitely possible to go on playing your PlayStation 4 games on the brand-new console, and several processes of transferring your saves have been confirmed by Sony.
In spite of being somewhat tricky, the simplest method happens to be the cloud storage method. It will be imperative to ensure that the most recent save has been backed up from your PlayStation 4 to the cloud and you need to download it manually on your PlayStation 5 – let us hope that an update in the future will help the PlayStation 5 to detect and download cloud saves automatically once a game has been installed.
Nevertheless, it notified that it is up to the developer to be able to transfer game saves between a PlayStation 5 version and a PlayStation 4 version of the identical game, and it is going to differ with cross-generation games. It is not likely that a developer will be deciding not to allow you to transfer.
Revisiting PlayStation’s past?
In case you like to play the outdated original PlayStation, PlayStation 2, or PlayStation 3 discs, you are rather unfortunate. Following the initial batch of PlayStation 3, Sony has shifted from backward compatibility, and it was not possible for PlayStation 4 to play games from older consoles. The same applies to PlayStation 5 as well.
Nevertheless, several ways will be available to you for accessing old games on PlayStation 5. You will be able to purchase a selection of PlayStation 2 classics on the PS network, and the PlayStation Now streaming service of Sony will allow you to gain access to a huge collection of PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 titles. You can play these games on PlayStation 5.
Regrettably, you will not find any easy way for accessing the huge library of original PlayStation or PlayStation Vita games in case you are not able to track down the old hardware. In fact, the options available to you for playing games on PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Vita will become more limited in the near future given that the PSN Store is being shut down by Sony this summer.
Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S
Microsoft is more concerned regarding backward compatibility. It is possible for the Xbox Series X and the Series S to play original Xbox 360, Xbox, and Xbox One games. However, it does not consist of virtually everything. Microsoft comes with a comprehensive listing of games which play on its brand-new consoles – presently, as many as 560 games from Xbox 360 and just 39 video games from the original Xbox library happen to be backward-compatible. A visual boost is provided to the old games on Series S and Series X by means of top-notch graphics. The hardware of the new consoles might likewise minimize the loading times for the games while increasing frame rates as well.
Save transfers
This is quite simple given that the Smart Delivery system of Microsoft will allow you to transfer backup files from games which are compatible with Xbox Series X. In case you have got backups for the Xbox 360 games, they can be transferred to the Xbox Series X as well. This method cannot be used by you for transferring saves to the Series X from the original Xbox games.
