Sony is gearing up for the PlayStation 5 which has been announced, but not revealed fully yet. At the heart of the system will be an 8-core AMD chipset using the third generation Ryzen architecture and a Radeon Navi GPU. Combined with an SSD for storage, and you’ve got a fast machine. With that fast machine Sony is now planning on having their new console backwards compatible to at least the PS4 era of games.
According to CB, there are conflicting reports on whether it will go beyond PS4 games, but I’d love it if they did. Also, Jim Ryan, CEO of PlayStation, recently touted that backward compatibility is seen as incredibly important. What I want to know is why wasn’t it important for the PS4, but now it is for the PS5?
Backward compatibility is not the only way PlayStation is going to try to win over gamers. At the end of the day, there’s one metric that stands above all the others: exclusive games. If you don’t have exclusive games or good exclusive games, you will not sell your system. It’s as plain as that.
CB once again is reporting on this saying that Sony wants to not only invest more in their 1st party developers through organic growth, but they are also planning on acquiring more studios. This is possibly the easiest way to acquire exclusives. Find a studio that makes games you like, purchase them, now their games are only on your console.
I love the idea of the backwards compatibility but am worried about them purchasing more studios. First, it may force me to buy a PS5 when it releases depending on games. Second, because I get really worried when anyone purchases another company in the same market. What are your thoughts on PlayStation’s current push for the PS5?