Ubisoft CEO seemingly confirms that PS5 will support backwards compatibility

While there’s still much about PlayStation 5 yet to be officially confirmed, a new statement from Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot suggests there’s hope for players wishing that their digital game purchases will carry forward. This comes from a quote directly taken from a recent financial call shared between the Triple-A publisher and its key investors, where the topic of next generation consoles was in heavy discussion.

"Those consoles will be running almost all the back catalogue of the previous consoles," Guillemot stated. "It will be something new in the industry. It will help the old generations to continue to be big consoles on the market for years to come." This is a feature we knew would be coming with PS5’s main competition, the Xbox Series X, but now it sure looks like it’s a done deal for PlayStation’s forthcoming 2020 console.

Whether players legitimately use it or not, backwards compatibility is always of constant discussion within the gaming zeitgeist. It’s one of the main appeals of Xbox’s wildly successful Game Pass subscription service after all, but it’s an area where PlayStation has somewhat been lagging behind. As such, Guillemot’s new comments reinstall faith that PS5 will do a much better job at supporting classic games compared to how PS4 handles the task.

Launch is notoriously a time in a console’s lifecycle where new games are sparse, meaning that the willingness of both Xbox Series X and PS5 to support PS4 and Xbox One games could prove vital. Microsoft’s stance on the next generation already indicates that it’ll be a following an approach that’s more akin to mobile, where players simply upgrade rather than transplant from one gaming eco-system to another every 8 or so years.

Fingers crossed Yves’ words are true. Backwards compatibility would be a major boon for PlayStation going forward.