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Image: Push Square

Sony “might be” working on hardware level PlayStation 3 emulation for the PS5, according to talkative Games Beat scribe Jeff Grubb. The industry observer – who’s proven to be well-connected – cited sources who’ve indicated that the platform holder is exploring support for its last-last-gen console, although it “may take some time”.

Earlier this week, the Japanese giant announced a new PS Plus subscription tier that will include classic games, spanning systems like PS1, PS2, and PSP – but PS3 will only be supported through cloud streaming in select territories. This is because the PS3’s architecture is notoriously exotic, although it has been argued that emulation may be possible with the right level of investment.

“Since talking about this all week, I’ve looked, I’ve asked – it sounds like Sony might be working on emulation for PS3 on PS5,” Grubb revealed, as spotted by VGC. “It may take some time. I wish they would come out and tell us that. Tell us that you care about this stuff because that is what was missing from the PS Plus announcement – to me, it seemed like they didn’t care about any of it. They just slapped it together, put a new name on it, and sold it.”

The journalist’s not wrong here – it’s something we observed in our reaction articles, too. The new tiers of PS Plus could potentially be very exciting, but Sony did a piss-poor job communicating why consumers should care – unfortunately, this is a recurring theme for the firm of late.

Obviously, getting PS3 games running on the PS5 will be a tremendous hurdle, and just because Sony’s potentially working on it doesn’t mean it’ll ever reach the public. But it would be nice if the organisation was a little more forthcoming about all this: we’d argue fans would appreciate it if the platform holder came out, admitted it was exploring the possibility, and outlined the challenges it still needs to overcome.

To us, that’s better than giving the impression it simply doesn’t care.

[source youtube.com, via videogameschronicle.com]