Der halvandet års tid til at PlayStation 5 langt om længe ankommer (i selskab med den næste Xbox naturligvis), og vi behøver ikke at spekulere længere, fordi Sony selv har bekræftet en række detaljer via artikler og interview. Blandt andet har de slået fast at PlayStation 5 bliver bagudkompatibel, og vil kunne spille "legacy software".
Men et patent viser at maskinen ikke bare vil kunne spille ældre spil, den vil kunne gøre det bedre end andre platforme. Patentansøgningen er faktisk over to år gammel, men er først for nylig blevet opdaget af adskillige medier. Patentet kan ses her, og beskrives således:
"Differences in performance of the hardware components of a new device and a legacy device can cause errors in synchronization on the new device, which may cause a legacy application to crash or produce incorrect output when running on a new device architectur. Such differences in performance can arise, e.g., from differences in hardware architecture between the new and legacy devices."
"The performance of an application on a new device may be closely matched to the performance of that same application on the legacy device by tuning the operating parameters of the new device. Examples of operating parameters include, among other things, the clock frequencies of the new device, the number of available general purpose registers (GPRs), instruction launch rates, and the like. The application may be run repeatedly on the new system while tuning its operating parameters to adjust the application-specific performance characteristics.
Det lader til at Sony sætter stort ind på bagudkompatibilitet.