New PlayStation Plus subscription proves the PS5 is backwards compatible

ByDavid Coulson Hours
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Last Updated on: 9th April 2022, 05:40 pm

Sony has officially announced its new update to the PlayStation Plus subscription service, merging PS Plus and PlayStation Now together with many other changes too.

The service will now feature three different tiers, each with more features as the price increases.

Some of these new additions include streaming and downloading of games from the PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, and even PSP.

While PS Now has included select PS2 and PS3 games for a while, and some PS1 games were available to download from the PlayStation Store on the PS3 and PS Vita, players will be able to play games from six different PlayStation platforms on their PS5, which begs the question of why is there no official backward compatibility available outside of PlayStation Plus/PS Now?

PlayStation Now PS3 Games
Credit: Sony

One thing that the Xbox is often praised for is its backward compatibility, with the current Xbox Series X|S allowing players to play the entire Xbox One library, as well as many Xbox 360 and original Xbox games, and the list of compatible games increases on a regular basis.

Microsoft also actively works on improving the playing experience for these games too, with many receiving graphical, frame rate, and resolution upgrades.

But, for some reason, Sony refuses to allow its PS4 and PS5 to be backward compatible with its retro systems, instead allowing for a handful of games to be able to be purchased from them, but players can’t use their own discs to play the games.

READ MORE: All about the new PlayStation Plus services; prices, games and more

However, with the addition of more games across all six platforms coming to the PS Plus service, this proves that Sony has the capability to allow the PS5 to be backward compatible, it would just require some work to build a robust emulator.

It will be interesting to see whether Sony continues to support the service with more retro games coming to PS Plus, or whether this will be a one-off collection that is forgotten about.