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The Playstation 4 has once again been rumoured to receive native Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 support sometime in the future. The PS4 is said to natively render selected classic titles at 1080p, this isn't the first time we've heard of this happening, back in January we reported that the console was going to emulate classic games as a part of the Playstation Now service.
The local backwards compatibility tip originated on Twitter, where regular Sony tipster, ‘@Thuway‘ said that local emulation support is coming:
He also noted that Sony is still refining the software and working out the bugs as not every title currently works. This recent tip coincides with our January report, which said that older games will be downloaded and emulated locally while Playstation 3 titles will be limited to streaming. We also learned that the PS Vita is capable of emulating Playstation one games “flawlessly”, however, so can most modern day smartphones.
It seems that Sony is currently testing the boundaries of both the PS4 and the Playstation Now service, some of these features might not reach consumers in the end but at least Sony is warming up to backwards compatibility again.
KitGuru Says: Backwards compatibility was phased out of the PS3's feature set and the trend continued in to this generation with neither of the new consoles from Microsoft or Sony supporting older titles. It looks like Sony has since changed its mind and wants to bring backwards compatibility back, although it will likely require us to re-buy our older games. What do you guys make of this? Should console makers re-incorporate backwards compatibility?
I don’t think there is anything bad that can come from allowing PS1/2 backwards compatibility. People who kept their library of PS1 and PS2 games will be rewarded, People planning on selling the games will be rewarded. The only losers would be the buyers when the price of PS1/2 games increase.