During this generation, the Xbox One has had one big advantage over the PS4: backwards compatibility. Now, we know Sony Interactive Entertainment is working on backwards compatibility for PS5, but it's unclear how robust this feature will be. For example, will it support all PS4 games are just certain ones? Will it be backwards compatible with the PS3, PS2, and PS1? We don't know because Sony hasn't said a peep about the feature. That said, Microsoft has been a bit more forthcoming about backwards compatibility on Project Scarlett -- the codename for the next Xbox. And according to the head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty, Microsoft believes this area of next-gen gaming will be a big advantage for Project Scarlett, especially at launch.

“We want – when you invest in Xbox – to know that you’re bringing that legacy content library with you," said Booty while speaking to GamesRadar. "It’s why we think we’ve got an advantage with Project Scarlett, because our goal is that any game that runs on an Xbox One will run on Scarlett. You’re not porting to a different operating system; you’re not porting to a different graphics API; you’re just running an Xbox game, right? So we hope that that’s a big advantage in terms of our initial content library.”

Of course, it remains to be seen if the Project Scarlett will eclipse the PS5 in this regard, but Booty seems to suggest Microsoft thinks it will. Again though, it's hard to know this for sure with Sony staying quiet on PS5's support of this feature.

You'd hope the PS5 will have complete backwards compatibility with at least the PS4. Not being backwards compatible with previous generations -- or only being backwards compatible with certain games from those generations -- is certainly much easier to forgive than the PS5 not having full backwards compatibility with the PS4.



Posted: Nov 29, 2019 5:00 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/11/28/xbox-scarlett-ps5-playstation-backwards-compatibility/