Over the weekend, several Twitter users reported seeing PlayStation 3 games listed on the PlayStation 5 store page accessed via the console, spurring numerous headlines and speculations about an incoming PS5 backwards compatibility feature. It didn’t help that the games were listed with price tags, which led to people believing that the recently rediscovered patent application for an extensive backwards compatibility feature and reports of Game Pass rival code-named Spartacus mean that something’s inbound. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Not yet, anyway.
As pointed out by several ResetEra and other social media users, this is an old visual bug. The prices you’re looking at are old PlayStation Now prices for PS3 games from days of yore when the service used to let users rent games individually.
Does this rule out PS5 backwards compatibility with PS3, PS2, and PS1 games?
In the absence of an official announcement, what’s happening behind the scenes is anybody’s guess. Let’s take the recent backwards compatibility patent news, for example. That patent was originally filed during the PS4 era, but seemed to have been recently updated. Companies are known to toy with different technologies and patent various systems so just because Sony updated an old patent doesn’t mean PS5 backwards compatibility with an older library is definitely in the cards.
Opinion: PS5 backwards compatibility with older libraries only sounds exciting
Zarmena writes… The timing of the aforementioned discovery has everyone crossing their fingers, but until we get official details about whatever the heck “Spartacus” entails, we’re all getting a little too excited each time there’s a development. Frankly, my current backlog is big enough that it’s not a deal-breaker for me if the PS5 isn’t backwards compatible with older libraries, but a Game Pass rival sure is welcome if it has recent games I’ve been eyeing. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not itching to play PS2 or PS3 games on my PS5.
In other news, The Last of Us HBO has cast Storm Reid as Riley, and Sega filed NFT trademarks around the same time it promised to reconsider its NFT plans.
[Source: ResetEra]
