PlayStation 5 may only support 100 backward compatible games at launch

Today, Sony released its specifications for the PlayStation 5 (PS5). While the system is considerably weaker than the Xbox Series X, it does have a faster solid-state drive and also offers backward compatibility. However, it looks like it’s not what everyone expected. There were rumors floating around that the PS5 would be backward compatible with every game back to the original PlayStation. That’s not the case, at least according to Sony.

According to Microsoft, the Xbox Series X will be able to play “thousands” of Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox games. Plus, they get a boost to resolution, frame rate, and even colors because they have high dynamic range (HDR) colors. Unfortunately, it looks like the PS5 will only play around 100 PlayStation 4 games at launch. It’s unclear if this is truly the case because Sony’s Mark Cerny said something else during his “The Road to PS5” presentation.

Lastly, we’re excited to confirm that the backward compatibility features are working well. We recently took a look at the top 100 PS4 titles as ranked by playtime, and we’re expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PS5. With more than 4,000 games published on PS4, we will continue the testing process and expand backward compatibility coverage over time.

It seems like the team is adopting an approach similar to what Microsoft did with the Xbox One. However, since then Microsoft has moved on and is now promising thousands of games on Xbox Series X. It’s unclear if Sony will ever catch up.