PlayStation 4 Not Backwards Compatible With Retail or Digital Games

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/80i_6UnnsRg?feature=player_detailpage" width="640"></iframe> <h2 class="article_subtitle" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px;">A new console brings a new, dedicated ecosystem.</h2><div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-right: 6px;">In a roundtable conversation with journalists, President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios noted that PS3 games of both the retail and downloadable variety will not be compatible with PlayStation 4, at least not natively. In other words, your PS3 discs won’t work in the new console nor will the games you downloaded. This means that hits like Journey, The Unfinished Swan, Shatter and hundreds of other games available in the digital space will not be carried over to PlayStation 4 in addition to the collection of PS3 discs sitting on your shelf.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-right: 6px;">There’s a catch, though: emulation. The PlayStation 3 doesn’t read PlayStation 2 discs (at least not anymore), but it can play PS2 games via the PlayStation Store in an emulated environment. Yoshida concedes that this is possible for PlayStation 4 supporting legacy PlayStation consoles as well. Indeed, the Gaikai presentation during PlayStation 4’s reveal touched on this “everything, everywhere” mentality. But for now, downloaded PS3 games won’t work “unless, somehow, some games work on emulation. And the easiest thing, technically, would be to make PSone games work on PS4 with emulation. But we’re not talking about our emulation plans as yet.”</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-right: 6px;">In short, “There are two ways [to play legacy content]: emulation or cloud services [from Gaikai]. But native support [of digital games from PS3], no, sorry. It doesn’t work.”</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-right: 6px;">But how about some good news to close? Yoshida reaffirmed that “disc-based games on PS4” will work on any other PlayStation 4. So, <a href="http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/21/sony-exec-playstation-4-doesnt-block-used-games" style="border: 0px none; color: #003399; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; resize: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">as first reported yesterday</a>, PS4 will have no used games/shared games lock for retail, store-bought titles.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; margin-right: 6px;"><br /></div></div></div>

PlayStation 4 PlayStation 4 Not Backwards Compatible With Retail or Digital Games

A new console brings a new, dedicated ecosystem. In a roundtable conversation with journalists, President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios noted...

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