As the ol’ saying goes: aw sh*t, here we go again! Following a tepid – and totally unrelated – “tease” from PlayStation Japan’s social media account over the weekend, the whole backwards compatibility song-and-dance has once again been restarted by a PS Store bug. Some fans noticed overnight that their PlayStation 4 Trophies were temporarily broken, and replaced by PS3 labels. We actually observed this ourselves, and came to the conclusion that someone at Sony HQ had plugged in the wrong cable – of course, it doesn’t take much for social media and other games websites to make a mountain out of a molehill.
https://twitter.com/Sirrog85/status/1485797378829422594
To be fair, this follows a spate of stories regarding backwards compatibility, although it all feels like wishful thinking from where we’re sitting. There are rumours that Sony will reboot PS Plus and PS Now later this year as Project Spartacus, with classic games touted as one of the premium subscriber tiers. This was then followed by an age-old error prompting PS3 games to appear on PS5’s search utility and an unrelated patent being passed around. Now the sudden appearance of PS3 labels on PS4 Trophies has people losing their collective minds.
Of course, rational thought concludes this was nothing more than a minor glitch, and unsurprisingly it was fixed promptly. We would like to stress once again, though, that the likelihood of PS3 titles being playable natively on the PS5 is slim-to-none: Sony’s shown little interest in extending backwards compatibility to its last-last-gen system and the CELL architecture is notoriously challenging to emulate. For the love of Cerny, keep calm and carry on!
[source twitter.com, via videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 33
"and came to the conclusion that someone at Sony HQ had plugged in the wrong cable"
In my country such a guy is generally called Dorel - a not so bright guy that cuts electrical cables to the whole neighborhood while digging a hole with a pickaxe. Guess he changed his line of work, or he has a brother working at Sony.
Late 2022 is too late to launch Spartacus, Sony need to did it sooner and partner with atleast Ubisoft Uplay ! I thought Sony will launch that project in spring 2022 :v
It kinda ridiculous that Sony can't find a way for these games to play natively. If Unpaid modders can get them to at least function on a PC, then the people who actually designed the console and codes should be able to make them run alot better. Microsoft won me over (I've been a mostly PS gamer since I got into the PS1). Just got an Xbox and it's so awesome I can play the original Gears trilogy at 4k 60fps.
Edit: I meant emulation. I was on break with limited time to proofread.
People are getting too desperate now. I'm kinda of dreading the next State of Play because so many will want Sony to fire all the big guns when in reality, it'll just be focused on GT7 and Ghostwire Tokyo as well as some indies.
You can't blame people. There's very little to be excited about with Sony, and seeing as they have converted into a mute company under the reign of Jim Ryan, being excited for much doesn't seem to be changing in the future.
@munstre I agree with this guy. Sony barely has enough capital to stay relevant in this new landscape. There not going to spend any money on a fan service for there hardcore audience. That kinda ship has sailed with Shawn Layden.
@AdamNovice I've felt the same way. You can feel the since of worry for Sonys future in every comments section ive seen. Every State of Play going forward will be under even a bigger microscope than before.
@Spanky It would take far too long to explain but long story short, native play with these games is not worth the effort. Emulation is the way forward. The PS3 being PowerPC based makes it quite frankly as close to impossible without emulation as you get. There’s a reason that people set up entire virtual machines just to run old PowerPC applications.
Sometimes it is the simple-looking development requests that are the trickiest to standardise and supply to a whole customer base.
what a bunch of nerds
Considering Terraria was showing the exact 3 ps consoles it released for (PS3/VITA/PS4) id say its more yet another test rather than a glitch. Don't be so quick to shoot rumour sayers down in flames
@AdamNovice no way next state of play is just games we know about. No way. They need to give us more hope atm.
A glitch caused by testing. 😂
Phew. Thank goodness we've been told about a minority of people jumping to conclusions for a couple of hours last night otherwise I wouldn't be able to get annoyed by them and let you all know how annoyed I am 😆
I know it doesn't make any sense. I wish there were sense. Where did all the sense go? - Tribore
@TBQL95 don't hold your breath , seen as though ubisoft+ announced coming to Xbox ( and r6 extraction on gp day one ) and no news on ps,when ea wanted EA play on the ps it apprently took a few years of ea begging to get on there, so I can't see it happening anytime soon
@nessisonett Well said. Additionally what people forget is that the Xbox One and Series Consoles don't do true backwards compatibility with X360 and OG Xbox either it is all emulation. Your disc, or digital license, allows you to download an emulated version of the game. It's a very smart solution, one I love, but it isn't true backwards compatibility either. And it only applies to a small subset of games most of which have been remastered anyway!
@Spanky
It's not that simple. The CellBE CPU was unique and the first of its kind when the PS3 launched. It's an entirely different architecture from the AMD chips we use now that run on Vulcan.
As for the PC emulation it has taken 10 years of development to get it working, and not that well. Less than 50% of the library runs and some very buggy. You need a pretty high end PC to have any hope in running it.
MS' emulation is much more strait forward. The CPU's in the Xbox One/Series are very similar to their original counterparts.
Weird how all these PS3 specific glitches keep happening isn't it
@RevGaming And that proves my point. Your expecting Sony to deliver something big when they might not be in a position to do so. Project Spartacus might be months away so it would be pointless talking about it now, likewise PSVR2. Plus any new games are relying on devs to make trailers and demos to show off and if they aren't ready then there's nothing Sony can do. In other words just have low expectations and you might find yourself being pleasantly surprised more often.
It seems like too much has happened for it to be a coincidence to me that we have had 2 PS3 errors in the last couple of weeks and the project Spartacus rumours at the same time I hope Sony has something big in the works
@AdamNovice ... While MS buys SEGA or something...
@nessisonett Was the 360 not PowerPC also? As well as the Wii/GC? Thought it was more to do with the CPU architecture but no expert...
AFAIK all back compat across consoles is emulated in some fashion so it's not a silly question to ask why the same can't be done by Sony by any means, just look at all the work done on RPCS3 over the last decade by hobbyists - they've somehow managed to emulate the CELL on a WIntel system.
Not quite the same thing but every single PS3 model can now be soft-modded to run almost every PS2 game, something Sony said they couldn't do/refused to do. In the same vein, the aforementioned RPCS3 can be ran on a modded PS4 to emulate PS3 games on a PS4.
I don't think it's a case of can't, just won't. If given access to current gen dev tools, I have absolutely no doubt that an enthusiastic bunch of tinkerers could get it working.
Jason Schreier himself has been tempting for backward compatibility for PS1-PS3 and even PSP. It has to be a thing. I hope that so.
@lessthanleo Well yeah. That’s why I said emulation was the way forward, not native play.
If you won the “privilege” to pay $500 for a PS5 only to play primitive, ugly old games on it then you’re an idiot and you don’t deserve it.
Okay so my original comment I said natively, I meant emulation because that's what the Xbox does. I'll take the loss on that. But my point still stands overall; a group of unpaid fans did a solid job in 10 years. They had no design documents, no code, any backend information, or money that this massive MULTIBILLION dollar Corporation has. My outdated PC can run the emulations alright, not the best and that's again by a unpaid group.
While Sony's software engineers may not be on the level of Microsoft. They are still some of the best. Microsoft at least tried.
Also the retro market is a sizeable group. You guys are underestimating the size. Look at Nintendo.
@figboot alot of games from that era actually still play great and look great. In example the Ratchet and Clank series is still great especially a Crack In Time and its still better than remake and Rift Apart.
These articles about BC has had me thinking how much i want to play Dead Space 2 again and also get the platinum for Portal 2.
Microsoft invested more than a million hours into play testing old games to see if they emulate well on Series X and Series S. The issue isn't that Sony couldn't get them to run, they don't have the resources to be able to guarantee that they would run well/add enhancements. And if they did have the resources they wouldn't just be able to use them with no regards for profit as Microsoft is.
I would be very surprised if Sony didn't have an in house PS3 emulator but being able to greenlight something like that is quite different to a passion project like RSPC3 (which in itself took years to be usable)
@AdamNovice I don't agree. We only know about 3 games coming and they're very very close so what's next? Why do I need a ps5? All the 3 games are cross gen. I mean they gotta do something.
The road to disappointment is simply having a traffic jam right now. Do not attempt to go down this road as you will be sitting still for a long time.
Remember when people swore up and down, and "analysts" guaranteed that a Switch Pro was coming? Be prepared for an OLED like disappointment, if you are grasping at PS3 trophy data signalling backwards compatibility & Game Pass competitior.
I'd be surprised if a PS version of Game Pass was anything other than simply a combination of PS+ & PS Now, likely tier system to keep standard PS+ pricing.
@figboot The highest rated PS5 game is a PS3 title from 2010. And some of the most played games on PS5 include GTAV (PS3, 2013) and Minecraft (PS3, 2013).
No one is more or less deserving than anyone else.
@Martsmall really hope Ubiplay will coming to ps because some game of ubisoft is really good and fun to play !
@Ken_Kaniff Shawn did an excellent job with the playstation classic!!
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