Sony Touts PS5 Multiplayer Backwards Compatibility With Legacy PS4 Consoles

Sony has already talked several times about the PS5 game console and what it will give gamers when it launches. It has promised that the price will be appealing given the console's hardware, which sounds like a nice way of saying it will be expensive but powerful. We recently saw a glimpse at how much more powerful the PS5 will be than the current PS4 Pro with a video showing the load times for the same game compared between both consoles.

At the same event where that load time video was recorded, Sony execs also talked about PS5 backward compatibility. Not only will the backward compatibility work for single-player PS4 games, but it will also work for multiplayer games. Sony went so far as to say that it sees backward compatibility as key for the new console. Sony's PlayStation head Jim Ryan said that backward compatibility allows Sony to migrate the "somewhat tribal" community from the PS4 to the PS5.

That means that the PS4 gamers can upgrade to the PS5 and still enjoy their same friends and same games until everyone has migrated to the new console, and after. Backward compatibility helps Sony to bridge engaged players from one generation to the next, meaning that gamers will be more likely to stick with PlayStation over the years instead of skipping to another console.

Sony also figures that by adding backward compatibility, it will give those that move to the PS5 early a chance to brag to friends about how great the new generation console is and possibly sway their friends to upgrade as well. It's still unclear when exactly the PS5 will launch. An alleged PS5 dev kit was spied in the wild earlier this month.