Microsoft may have gotten all the attention this week for its latest update to the Xbox One that enables backwards compatibility for over 100 Xbox 360 titles, but it seems Sony might have done the same thing for the PS4 with less celebration.
Eurogamer recently received the Special Edition Star Wars Battlefront PS4, along with the code for four downloadable titles: Super Star Wars, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, Star Wars: Racer Revenge and Star Wars: Bounty Hunter.
When the team went to boot up the three old PS2 titles, something strange happened. An old PS2 logo came up in "all of its poorly upscaled glory when you boot each title." Eurogamer reports that there was also a system in place to emulate a PS2 memory card to save your spot in the games and a prompt at the start of the emulation that told them that the select and start buttons can be accessed by pressing on the left and right of the DualShock 4's trackpad.
If these titles were ports of the original games, there'd be no need for the prompts or memory card emulation, the games would work natively with the PS4 software leading the team to believe that what they were looking at was the first titles to receive backwards compatibility on the PS4.
What's even more interesting about the possible emulator is that it upscaled the titles from their original resolutions - 512x448 and 640x448 - to a new native resolution on the PS4 of 1292x896.
The fact that a PS1 and PS2 emulator was in development was no secret. Sony made it abundantly clear at the launch of PlayStation Now that it wanted to bring the entire collection of past games onto its latest powerhouse, but has been mysteriously tight-lipped about the development of the software ever since.
The PS2 had 1,850 titles, one of the largest collections of any game console. If Sony can work some magic, the PS4's relatively meager library could quadruple in size overnight.
We've reached out to Sony to confirm the emulator's existence out in the wild, and its future plans for releasing PS2 content or (crossing our fingers) allowing the system to play PS2 discs.
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Well it's not technically backwards compatible. It doesn't contain any of the hardware from either of those systems. It's more or less emulation. In either case I am not surprised. It's not like they aren't capable of doing this.
Well it's not technically backwards compatible. It doesn't contain any of the hardware from either of those systems. It's more or less emulation. In either case I am not surprised. It's not like they aren't capable of doing this.
I've read it is an emulator which is pretty much is lol. I won't be using it anyways so doesn't bother me.
I had heard sony talked about implementing the ability to play PS2 games on a PS4 a while ago but didn't think it would be this soon.
I'll have to give it a try myself sometime today, I guess it's always a cool thing for a console to have even though I personally don't really play PS2 stuff that often at all anymore.
PS2 backwards compatibility was good on PS3 because it was the previous generation console. We needed PS3 backwards compatibility on PS4 not PS2 compatibility.
PS2 backwards compatibility was good on PS3 because it was the previous generation console. We needed PS3 backwards compatibility on PS4 not PS2 compatibility.
Microsoft may have gotten all the attention this week for its latest update to the Xbox One that enables backwards compatibility for over 100 Xbox 360 titles, but it seems Sony might have done the same thing for the PS4 with less celebration.
Eurogamer recently received the Special Edition Star Wars Battlefront PS4, along with the code for four downloadable titles: Super Star Wars, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, Star Wars: Racer Revenge and Star Wars: Bounty Hunter.
When the team went to boot up the three old PS2 titles, something strange happened. An old PS2 logo came up in "all of its poorly upscaled glory when you boot each title." Eurogamer reports that there was also a system in place to emulate a PS2 memory card to save your spot in the games and a prompt at the start of the emulation that told them that the select and start buttons can be accessed by pressing on the left and right of the DualShock 4's trackpad.
If these titles were ports of the original games, there'd be no need for the prompts or memory card emulation, the games would work natively with the PS4 software leading the team to believe that what they were looking at was the first titles to receive backwards compatibility on the PS4.
What's even more interesting about the possible emulator is that it upscaled the titles from their original resolutions - 512x448 and 640x448 - to a new native resolution on the PS4 of 1292x896.
The fact that a PS1 and PS2 emulator was in development was no secret. Sony made it abundantly clear at the launch of PlayStation Now that it wanted to bring the entire collection of past games onto its latest powerhouse, but has been mysteriously tight-lipped about the development of the software ever since.
The PS2 had 1,850 titles, one of the largest collections of any game console. If Sony can work some magic, the PS4's relatively meager library could quadruple in size overnight.
We've reached out to Sony to confirm the emulator's existence out in the wild, and its future plans for releasing PS2 content or (crossing our fingers) allowing the system to play PS2 discs.
source: You must login or register to view this content.
will we be able to put PS1 or PS2 discs in or will we have to download from ps store?