So PS4 Backward Compatibility with PS5 is Emulation Right?

[Lawfer]

It's seems like it is based on their wording?

[nmalinoski]

It's probably some level of hardware virtualization. Since they're not allowing just any PS4 game to run, it seems to me like either they ran into some pretty nasty bugs and need to whitelist which games work fine, or the backwards compatibility software simply isn't properly ready yet.

[Lawfer]

Yeah seems like it, because if it was hardware compatibility (like say Gamecube games on the Wii) then all PS4 games should work fine as they do on PS4/PS4 Pro, yet it seems that not all PS4 games will work on PS5 on launch, so this would indicate that there is no backward compatibility from a hardware side.

[Guspaz]

It's like running a 10 year old game on a modern computer. The hardware and software isn't the same, but it's close enough that you can get it working with a compatibility layer. But there may be some per-game tweaks required.

Microsoft, whose hardware is more or less the same as Sony's both current and next-gen, promised universal backwards compatibility. This is probably just because they have a great deal more experience on the software backwards compatibility and virtualization than Sony does in recent history, so they've probably designed a more comprehensive virtualized environment.

[Seraphic]

Have a bad feeling that PS4 backward compatibility on the PS5 will be half hearted at best with little to no chance for PS1/PS2 support now with their SKU without a disc drive.

[Lawfer]

Have a bad feeling that PS4 backward compatibility on the PS5 will be half hearted at best with little to no chance for PS1/PS2 support now with their SKU without a disc drive.

Not even the PS2 (all models included) ran PS1 games without resorting to emulation as it was missing the PS1 GPU, so the graphics are emulated, which resulted in not 100% compatibility with PS1, this also resulted in graphical glitches (Parasite Eve), freezes (Grandia) and other bugs in some other games (Xenogears, Tomba etc) and all these highly varies from one PS2 revision to another, Slim PS2s made this even worse by removing the PS1 audio chip, so with Slim PS2 both sound and picture is emulated.

Same thing with the launch PS3 these only had parts of a PS2 present inside them, so it was still using emulation to run PS2 games on it, which created issues in certain games (such as Odin Sphere).

I think only the Wii had backward compatibility from a hardware side as it was basically a GameCube 1.5.

[Unseen]

I think only the Wii had backward compatibility from a hardware side as it was basically a GameCube 1.5.

The SG-1000/Master System/Mega Drive family had almost full backward compatibility to each previous generation because the graphics chip was extended a few times and the CPU of the Master System became the sound coprocessor in the Mega Drive. The MD broke compatibility with the SG-1000 (and a very small number of Master System) games though because it dropped the SG-1000's original video modes.

[BONKERS]

Have a bad feeling that PS4 backward compatibility on the PS5 will be half hearted at best with little to no chance for PS1/PS2 support now with their SKU without a disc drive.

What's the worse thought of this is that Sony is sitting on a great PS1 emulator that worked fine with the PS3. And a PS2 emulator that just needs more powerful hardware to run it and some more development. And yet they just ignore it.
The PS2 in particular is the sore point because there's no great way to play disc games on modern displays looking decent without a PC and emulation (And a ton of tweaking).
Sony's PS2 on PS4 releases were pretty half baked too, prone to crashing and horrible stuttering on 30FPS games (Not properly rendering duplicated frames) to the point of feeling unplayable to me when I tried to play the games I bought.

[Guspaz]

The PS3 wasn't fast enough for full general-purpose PS2 emulation, and the CPUs in the XB1 and PS4 have hilariously bad single-threaded performance. The PS5 and XBSX represent an enormous leap forward in CPU performance, they could handle PS2 emulation without any difficulty.

[carlbarx]

I think only the Wii had backward compatibility from a hardware side as it was basically a GameCube 1.5.

The Wii U is also backwards compatible through hardware.

[PearlJammzz]

From what Cerny showed there will be three modes. PS4, PS4 Pro, and PS5. Even 'boost' mode on the PS4 Pro wasn't 100% compatible with all games and thus you had to turn that off which in turn made games only use 1/2 the GPU. Most all games worked though and it's likely we'll see the same on the PS5. They just may not gain anything from the PS5. Seems the compatibility layer also clocks the CPU and GPU down to better match the base PS4 or PS4 Pro. WiiU did similar but went an extra level because it was technically a different console. It has the same style of CPU/GPU and it just downclocked itself to match the Wii and then also went one step further by booting into a Wii OS.

I really don't think it'll be much of an issue but you never know what random indie game has a bug with the system. I reckon all 1st and 2nd party games won't have an issue. I also wouldn't call it emulation. There may be a compatibility layer but that's not emulation.

I just want GoW in 4k/60! Game was great but that 30FPS cap with those long, fluid animations made the game feel a slight bit disconnected.

[heli]

The PS3 wasn't fast enough for full general-purpose PS2 emulation, and the CPUs in the XB1 and PS4 have hilariously bad single-threaded performance. The PS5 and XBSX represent an enormous leap forward in CPU performance, they could handle PS2 emulation without any difficulty.

It would be nice of sony to have full backward compatibility for once.

[Guspaz]

Oh, I don't think Sony will *support* PS2 backcompat, I just think it's now technologically feasible.

[Konsolkongen]

From what Cerny showed there will be three modes. PS4, PS4 Pro, and PS5. Even 'boost' mode on the PS4 Pro wasn't 100% compatible with all games and thus you had to turn that off which in turn made games only use 1/2 the GPU. Most all games worked though and it's likely we'll see the same on the PS5. They just may not gain anything from the PS5. Seems the compatibility layer also clocks the CPU and GPU down to better match the base PS4 or PS4 Pro. WiiU did similar but went an extra level because it was technically a different console. It has the same style of CPU/GPU and it just downclocked itself to match the Wii and then also went one step further by booting into a Wii OS.

I really don't think it'll be much of an issue but you never know what random indie game has a bug with the system. I reckon all 1st and 2nd party games won't have an issue. I also wouldn't call it emulation. There may be a compatibility layer but that's not emulation.

I just want GoW in 4k/60! Game was great but that 30FPS cap with those long, fluid animations made the game feel a slight bit disconnected.

Boost mode only used the increased clock speed of the GPU and CPU. The double GPU size was only used for games that supported the Pro.

[orange808]

Frankly, after the dawn of checkerboard rendering, there's no reason to assume that only indie games will struggle. After all, most indie games will be built on middleware. Middleware vendors have some motivation to work with Sony on compatibility; game devs do not. All middleware vendors sell is middleware, so improving their product is job one. All game devs do is sell games and perpetually devving one game doesn't pay the bills. Frankly, AAA devs won't care any more than indie devs if their old games run on a new machine.

[Ikaruga11]

I'm not expecting the PS5 to be backwards compatible with the PS1, PS2 or PS3, but the fact that it won't be 100% backwards compatible with the PS4 is ridiculous.

[PearlJammzz]

I'm not expecting the PS5 to be backwards compatible with the PS1, PS2 or PS3, but the fact that it won't be 100% backwards compatible with the PS4 is ridiculous.

Any company I think would be hesitant to say 100%. There will always be some jank game that has issues. By the language they used and the fact they showed games can run in any of the three modes (ps4, ps4 pro, and ps5) I suspect the majority of anything anyone actually wants to play will just work. A few games may just need small patches to work, and then there will be a small handful of games that are coded in a way they just won't work. Sony can't really 100% test end to end every little game ever released for PS4. I'm sure the community will work on a wiki though that show any games that don't work.

I really hope some of the reviewers get their consoles early and can run it through its paces so we can get a sense of back compat. I think Sony could really use that as a marketing tool to get people to buy a PS5 who may have skipped out on PS4.

[H6rdc0re]

Oh, I don't think Sony will *support* PS2 backcompat, I just think it's now technologically feasible.

PS5 should be able to do PS1-PS3 with emulation easy. It has more than enough power to emulate these. I doubt they will though as all these companies seem to lack much sense. For instance just look at Nintendo and Sega completely oblivious to their own backlog and utter inability to see they could re-release all their classics.

[bobrocks95]

I'm not expecting the PS5 to be backwards compatible with the PS1, PS2 or PS3, but the fact that it won't be 100% backwards compatible with the PS4 is ridiculous.

Any company I think would be hesitant to say 100%. There will always be some jank game that has issues. By the language they used and the fact they showed games can run in any of the three modes (ps4, ps4 pro, and ps5) I suspect the majority of anything anyone actually wants to play will just work. A few games may just need small patches to work, and then there will be a small handful of games that are coded in a way they just won't work. Sony can't really 100% test end to end every little game ever released for PS4. I'm sure the community will work on a wiki though that show any games that don't work.

I really hope some of the reviewers get their consoles early and can run it through its paces so we can get a sense of back compat. I think Sony could really use that as a marketing tool to get people to buy a PS5 who may have skipped out on PS4.

My hope was that I'd be able to play all my PS4 games in 4K on the PS5, but they're so hush-hush I don't think there'll be any enhancements at all.

Heck, with the mention of another GTA V port and an updated Spiderman, I don't even think 1st/2nd party games will be updated to take advantage of the PS5, I think Sony would prefer to sell you your games again.

[bobrocks95]

My hope was that I'd be able to play all my PS4 games in 4K on the PS5, but they're so hush-hush I don't think there'll be any enhancements at all.

Heck, with the mention of another GTA V port and an updated Spiderman, I don't even think 1st/2nd party games will be updated to take advantage of the PS5, I think Sony would prefer to sell you your games again.

"We’re expecting backward compatible titles will run at a boosted frequency on PS5 so that they can benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions."

Their messaging is painfully unclear then. At the PS5 reveal they preferred to talk about enhanced upsells rather than say anything about GTA V, Spiderman, or Last of Us Part 2 having any sort of PS5 enhancements with the PS4 version. At the absolute very least I'm going to wait until they say more about it- if it was a big point to them they'd say "buy Last of Us now and it will play even better on PS5 once it's out!" Still just sounds to me like we'll be buying the PS5 versions again for some games.

[PearlJammzz]

My hope was that I'd be able to play all my PS4 games in 4K on the PS5, but they're so hush-hush I don't think there'll be any enhancements at all.

Heck, with the mention of another GTA V port and an updated Spiderman, I don't even think 1st/2nd party games will be updated to take advantage of the PS5, I think Sony would prefer to sell you your games again.

"We’re expecting backward compatible titles will run at a boosted frequency on PS5 so that they can benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions."

Their messaging is painfully unclear then. At the PS5 reveal they preferred to talk about enhanced upsells rather than say anything about GTA V, Spiderman, or Last of Us Part 2 having any sort of PS5 enhancements with the PS4 version. At the absolute very least I'm going to wait until they say more about it- if it was a big point to them they'd say "buy Last of Us now and it will play even better on PS5 once it's out!" Still just sounds to me like we'll be buying the PS5 versions again for some games.

Some games already will. FF15 for example has an uncapped framerate mode. I think GoW does as well. Any of those SHOULD boost up to the 60FPS. I assume it's up to the developers though if they want to make a patch to take advantage of the extra power or not. I don't think Sony will be doing anything about that. If TLoU2 has an uncapped framerate mode on the pro then we'll be good for PS5. If not, we'll likely need a new patch.

I can't see why developers releasing games now (1st/2nd party) who already have PS5 dev kits won't at least do something in regards to PS5 enhancement. You know those developers want to play their game in 60FPS too. Lets hope Sony has a presentation centered solely on back compat and talks about it more in depth. All around the web it seems people are VERY interested in it.

[tacoguy64]

Wasnt the entire point of going with the x86 architecture to make backwards comparability much easier? Well not the entire point but one of the main benefits of doing so. It should be easy, just probably needs some sort of OS updates. PS3 are a different story but i imagine that they could probably even use emulation for some of that. I don't know why they don't have it figured out. Xbox seems like it will have it. And i bet you the next switch will have it most likely have it too.

[nmalinoski]

I think the primary point of going amd64 was a combination of availability of parts and ratio of performance to cost; the parts aren't exotic or fully-custom (The resulting configuration is custom, but the parts themselves are based on existing architectures), they're readily-available and already in wide use, and they're more powerful than what you'd get from something like an ARM chip.

Backwards-compatibility would be nice, but we shouldn't have expected it before the system's release.

[tacoguy64]

I think the primary point of going amd64 was a combination of availability of parts and ratio of performance to cost; the parts aren't exotic or fully-custom (The resulting configuration is custom, but the parts themselves are based on existing architectures), they're readily-available and already in wide use, and they're more powerful than what you'd get from something like an ARM chip.

Backwards-compatibility would be nice, but we shouldn't have expected it before the system's release.

You're right several more important factors that backwards compatibility. One of the biggest ones like you said cost to performance ratio. I just remember reading a lot about how switching to the x86 architecture was gonna make it fairly simple to implement backwards compatibility with the previous gen. I just like to think of how microsoft updates between their OS and games just get better performance with each update.

[Guspaz]

I'm not sure how x86 makes backwards compatibility any easier. All three previous consoles were PowerPC. The problem is that, by 2013, nobody was making desktop-class low power processors other than AMD and Intel, and Intel wasn't willing to do semi-custom parts. The only company doing desktop-class ARM chips today is Apple, but they weren't there yet in 2013, and they don't sell their chips to anybody else.

[orange808]

Yeah. x86 is more about performance than compatibility.

Not sure where ARM even fits into this. That's not happening.

I'll believe true desktop ARM when I see it. People keep telling me that it's happening tomorrow, but there's a catch: AMD and Intel haven't stopped pushing forward. ARM plays from behind. Can they really catch up in the next few years?

Beyond that, development tools and GPUs are centered around x86. That has to be built.

Then, there's the GPU problem.

You think AMD is going to make you a flagship quality custom GPU to partner with ARM and upend their processor business? That seems unlikely. It's all nVidia.

Microsoft and Sony would have to submit completely to nVidia and do everything nVidia demands. nVidia would play nice the first time, but that would change quickly. In the current climate, there are options for most components. Would switching to ARM be worth it? nVidia is going to take advantage of their market position and demand a ransom in the second generation of ARM consoles. There are no viable alternatives and there won't be. There's no garage startup coming to upend GPUs. How long would it take to build an alternative to nVidia GPUs (if that can be done)? Too long.

I can't see any other company besides Nintendo having success with ARM in a gaming console in the near future. And, if any other company besides Nintendo made the Switch, that company would be drowning in red ink by now, anyhow. Nintendo carries their own hardware unilaterally and others have the option to participate (in Nintendo's private party) and "get a slice". Sony and Microsoft depend on others.

[Guspaz]

In Apple's case, they've also been pushing them forward aggressively, with the A12X performing in the same ballpark with a quad-core eight-thread Intel i7 mobile chip. They do seem to plan to migrate their laptops and desktops to ARM starting with a laptop model starting next week (for developers), but there are a few key points here:

1) ARM and x86 are just instruction sets, and tell you nothing about the performance or architecture of a CPU: they're basically just interfaces to the CPU.

2) Apple has been designing their own CPUs in-house for years now, and they put a very large amount of money into that R&D

3) As both the chipmaker and device maker, Apple can get their chips into products sooner, giving them another performance edge

They also have the development tools and may end up with AMD GPUs if their in-house and PowerVR GPUs don't perform to laptop/desktop standards.

But, as I said earlier, it's moot because Apple doesn't sell their chips to anybody else, and nobody else is making desktop-class ARM chips like these. Nintendo can get away with mobile-class CPUs because their consoles are mobile-first, but that won't fly for Microsoft or Sony.

[orange808]

In Apple's case, they've also been pushing them forward aggressively, with the A12X performing in the same ballpark with a quad-core eight-thread Intel i7 mobile chip. They do seem to plan to migrate their laptops and desktops to ARM starting with a laptop model starting next week (for developers), but there are a few key points here:

1) ARM and x86 are just instruction sets, and tell you nothing about the performance or architecture of a CPU: they're basically just interfaces to the CPU.

2) Apple has been designing their own CPUs in-house for years now, and they put a very large amount of money into that R&D

3) As both the chipmaker and device maker, Apple can get their chips into products sooner, giving them another performance edge

They also have the development tools and may end up with AMD GPUs if their in-house and PowerVR GPUs don't perform to laptop/desktop standards.

But, as I said earlier, it's moot because Apple doesn't sell their chips to anybody else, and nobody else is making desktop-class ARM chips like these. Nintendo can get away with mobile-class CPUs because their consoles are mobile-first, but that won't fly for Microsoft or Sony.

We both know what you get from most low power ARM designs. The instruction set isn't my point. I have no idea what Apple has done. If you're telling me they have abandoned the focus on low power, scaled ARM designs, and unilaterally developed their own true alternative desktop class processor, I'll believe when I see it.

Also, Apple doesn't game. There's no real world AAA game software to prove it. Benchmarks are rubbish, so I'm not buying any of that. Their CPU will never face a true test, so it's hard to say how it would perform.

I'm sure it will be very nice for desktop applications.

AMD won't ever put top performance into ARM machines. That would be wildly suicidal and stupid. PowerVR is all mobile now, aren't they?

Apple unilaterally developed in house rivals for flagship Intel/AMD x86 processors and nVidia/AMD GPUs? Well, I'll believe it when I see it.

As for Nintendo...
Nintendo "gets away with it" because they might be the world's number one software house and their hardware is a mere vassal to carry their IP. They like help from third parties, but they don't need it. Nintendo makes money either way because they sell software.

The mobile aspect is a great niche, but anybody could have built Switch hardware. The trick is Nintendo could support the console all by themselves and make money. Rather or not third parties want to join is secondary.

[Guspaz]

Apple switched from licensed ARM designs to in-house from-scratch custom ARM designs with their A6 chip in 2012, and they've been quite successful at it since then, with the chips typically being the top-performing ARM chips for some time after their release. I think that part of their lead in this area is the huge R&D money they spend on it, part of it is the shorter time-to-market they get from putting it in their own devices, and part of it is that they're using bleeding-edge TSMC processes (they're expected to be the first chips shipping on TSMC's 5nm process). It doesn't hurt that they put a ton of L2 cache in these things, four times as much per-core as Ryzen does.

Typically, their CPUs offer more than twice the per-core performance of competing ARM processors, but also use significantly more power per-core, so after both are taken into account, their performance-per-watt ends up just being decently better than the competition and not massively better. They also use a big.LITTLE style architecture like most mobile chips do these days, where they add a few extra low-performance power-optimized cores for handling less intensive tasks.

Generally, their per-core CPU performance isn't super relevant in the mobile space, but it positions them well to scale up without being as reliant on multithreaded performance. If you try to take a four-core smartphone ARM processor and quadruple the core count for use in a laptop or desktop, you're going to find that you're really bottlenecked by single-threaded performance. But if you take a similarly performing dual-core smartphone chip and quadruple it to eight cores for use in a laptop or desktop, that's going to work much better.

Apple's current strategy is to release mobile chips with 2x performance cores and 4x efficiency cores, and then produce tablet/laptop class chips with 4x performance cores and 4x efficiency cores, which they're currently putting into their iPad Pro line. The latter has comparable per-core performance to Intel's laptop chips (and comparable high-performance core counts), so when they put them in the MacBook, they don't really need to do anything special: it can share the same CPUs as the iPad Pro. Possibly with higher clockspeeds since they can use active cooling in a laptop.

If they want to scale those up to desktops, they'll need to go farther and introduce a third variant, perhaps with 8 performance cores and no efficiency cores.

On the subject of GPUs: they used PowerVR GPUs up until 2017, at which point they transitioned to their own in-house GPU designs. This essentially drove PowerVR's parent company into bankruptcy, as Apple represented the majority of their revenue, after which they were acquired by the Chinese government.

At this point, Apple uses three types of GPUs in their products:

AMD: laptops and desktops
Intel: laptops
Apple: mobile and tablet

AMD would probably be perfectly happy to put an AMD GPU in an Apple ARM laptop or desktop. They were willing to put an AMD GPU on an Intel CPU, after all, with Kaby Lake-G. That said, I don't expect that to happen any time soon: Apple's own GPUs are more than sufficient for laptops, where they're mostly using Intel integrated graphics currently.

But again, all this is just stuff that impacts Apple's own product lineup. It's irrelevant for consoles. It doesn't matter how good or bad Apple's ARM CPUs or GPUs are, because Apple isn't going to sell their chips to Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo, and Apple's last full-on attempt to produce a gaming console with the Pippin was quite embarrassing. They added support for Xbox and PlayStation controllers to iOS/tvOS/iPadOS and did their Apple Arcade thing, but that seems to be about as far as they're willing to go.