Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida “didn’t think it was possible” to do the kind of backwards compatibility Microsoft has announced.
The Microsoft announcement that caused the biggest cheers at this year’s E3 was easily the reveal of free backwards compatibility for the Xbox One – especially when you consider the scathing remarks then-president Don Mattrick made on backwards compatibility a few years ago. So what did Sony think of the announcement? According to Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, they were completely baffled. They had no idea that Microsoft was going to announce it, and it caught them completely off-guard. Yoshida didn’t even think it was possible, and says the feature is “highly unlikey” to make it’s way to the PS4.
“I didn’t think it was possible. There must be lots of engineering effort,” Yosihda told Eurogamer. “They talked about 100 games, but what kind of games will be included? Is it smaller games or big games? We don’t know.” Unlike Yoshida, we have now learned the kind of games that will be included, a full list of which is here. It includes “big games” like Mass Effect, and “small games” like Alien Hominid.
When Sony fan’s saw Microsoft’s announcement, they were hopeful that the feature may make it’s way to the PS4, but Yoshida doesn’t think so. “[backwards compatibility on PS4] would be super challenging to do so. I never say never, but we have no plans,” he stated.
He further explains that it’s the very unique nature of PS3 games that would make backwards compatibility so hard. He tells us the PS3 had such a unique architecture, and some games made very extensive use of it’s SPUs (the Cell processor with its ultra-fast satellite co-processors), which is something that just cannot be emulated on the PS4, which uses a more traditional AMD-based architecture.
Source: Eurogamer
