Things are afoot in the world of Sony and people are linking two incidents together, both of which involve the PlayStation 3.
Firstly, the company posted a revised version of their backwards compatibility patent which uses cycle counters to trick a modern piece of equipment – say a PS5 – in to running the CPU and GPU at the speeds of a PS3. This is not a new idea, Sony filed the original patent back in 2015 and updated it in 2020 so this is just another update.
Secondly, the PS5 version of the PlayStation Store has started listing PlayStation 3 games with a price tag rather than redirecting you to PlayStation Now which is what has happened in the past.
Uhhh. Not to panic anyone, but a PS3 game shouldn't have a price when viewed on a PS5.
Unless… pic.twitter.com/5CTACWGh7s
— Jordan Middler (@JordanMiddler) January 16, 2022
Some are suggesting that this is an indication that Sony’s rumoured plans to revamp PlayStation Plus and merge in PlayStation Now, codenamed Spartacus, are close to completion. However, that may not be the case. A user of Twitter has pointed out that the PlayStation Store has had these listing errors many times in the past. Meanwhile over on Reddit a poster has claimed the games are not showing in the German Store where PS Now is available.
It does appear that the PS3 games having a price on the PS5 store is a listings bug rather than any indication that backwards compatibility is about to be rolled out. However, the rumours of Sony merging in PS Now to PlayStation Plus in an effort to combat Xbox Game Pass are rather more plausible.
Sony have taken a number of approaches to backwards compatibility in the past. The PS3 launched with built in backwards compatibility but it greatly increased the cost and and the ‘phat’ PS3 consoles were soon phased out in favour of a cheaper model that did not include the tech needed to play PS2 games. Sony then posted a patent that essentially repackaging the guts of a PS2 into an attachable doohickey which could then be attached to the PS3.
Source: Twitter
