Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: What’s Happening with PlayStation 5’s Backwards Compatibility?

In addition to having its own starting library, the soon-to-launch PlayStation 5 will be a fine system for anyone who wants to play their PlayStation 4 games through backwards compatibility, some with next-gen enhancements. Well, most of them.

All signs suggested Sony was implementing the feature well for their next-generation console, a switch from the PS4 which didn’t play PlayStation 3 titles, and PS3 systems after the first batch that didn’t play PlayStation 2 games (though did play PSOne games). The company clarified through an FAQ that nearly every PS4 game will be compatible outside ten games. The most popular among them is Shadow Complex Remastered, but there were few complaints. A disclaimer on that page went unnoticed (yes, including by me), though: “This list is subject to change and excludes demos, media, and non-game applications.” We might have received a peek at those changes at the end of last week.

In a post on the Ubisoft Connect blog, Ubisoft clarified that several of their games won’t be backwards-compatible with PS5. The biggest game there is Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the last Assassin’s Creed game released before the series went in a new direction with Origins. Other titles include the Assassin’s Creed Chronicles Trilogy Pack (Assassin’s Creed Chronicles China, Russia, and India), Risk, Star Trek Bridge Crew, Werewolves Within, and VR shooter Space Junkies. These games, as you can see, are not on Sony’s list. What’s happening here?

The mystery deepened after taking a look at game pages on the PlayStation Store, which contained interesting disclaimers. The Syndicate page, for example, includes the following: “When playing on PS5, this game may exhibit errors or unexpected behavior and some features available on PS4 may be absent.” The games will work with hitches, which could refer to anything. It’s also notably different from what’s listed on the pages of games Sony specifically said won’t be playable on PS4, which contain a “Playable on: PS4 only” disclaimer.

This gets worse upon knowing that not only do the pages for the above Ubisoft games contain the same message, other games from different publishers do too. The page for Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition has it, as does the page for space shooter Velocity 2X. There are likely others, but I’m not willing to dedicate so much time to clicking on multiple PS4 game pages to find this, especially with the new PS Store being inconsistent with loading at the moment.

Instead of clarifying what could go wrong when these games are played, Ubisoft banished the whole page into the Void of the Web. The link now goes to the newest Ubisoft Connect page. After reaching out, Ubisoft clarified to IGN that the page was deleted due to “possible errors.” They’re likely referring to how the games will actually be playable on PS5, though with still-unspecified issues. There’s unlikely to be any detailing of this until the press and early adopters get their hands on the system and try the games themselves.

Before being deleted, the Ubisoft page mentioned how all the games that will have errors on PS5 will run fine on Xbox Series X|S, to no surprise. Microsoft has much more experience with this backwards compatibility thing on their consoles, since both Xbox Series systems will play all Xbox One titles, along with an array of Xbox 360 and even original Xbox games.

Many of them will have good enhancements. Digital Foundry played a portion of Assassin’s Creed Unity on the Series X, a game with notoriously strained performance on XB1 (and slightly worse on PS4) but runs at a steady 60fps on the more powerful next-gen variant. It only runs at this framerate through the physical copy, before the patch that capped the framerate at 30fps to help its performance on current-gen systems. But the game is a marvel to behold, besting the most recent AC games in terms of looks — including the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. You can’t blame anyone for wanting to see Syndicate running similarly despite not being as much of a looker. It will be fine on the Xbox Series, and hopefully not too bad on PS5.

In the meantime, Sony should provide a list of games that will run with errors for the sake of transparency. The list of only ten games is a half-truth, and it would be nice to know which games will have hitches (whatever they are) before anyone puts the discs in the drive or open the games after downloading. I fully expect that PS5 owners will have to find out all of these by searching for them on the PlayStation Store or simply trying the games themselves, but I hope Sony surprises me.

It’s disappointing that not every PS4 game will run up to speed on PS5, especially when there’s no evidence that this will happen on Xbox platforms. But it beats not having the option at all. The developers will hopefully patch these games to fix the errors, in the same way Sony has already started patching games run more efficiently on PS5 — and PS4 in select cases. They’ll be far from the last.