ElI5 Why the PS5 can’t support PS3/PS2/PS1 games if Xbox series X/S can with one and 360
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Sony chooses not to allow this.
The Xbox X/S simply runs an emulator on the console, mimicking the OS of the earlier generations, allowing them to run earlier generation games. Its not rocket science – we’ve had emulators for decades and since Microsoft has access to the original OS code, they can make a near perfect emulator.
Sony could do this too – they have the same access to earlier gen PS OSs and could easily create emulators for the PS5. They simply feel that there isn’t enough money to be made in emulating PS1-3 games.
Sony chooses not to allow this.
The Xbox X/S simply runs an emulator on the console, mimicking the OS of the earlier generations, allowing them to run earlier generation games. Its not rocket science – we’ve had emulators for decades and since Microsoft has access to the original OS code, they can make a near perfect emulator.
Sony could do this too – they have the same access to earlier gen PS OSs and could easily create emulators for the PS5. They simply feel that there isn’t enough money to be made in emulating PS1-3 games.
PS3/PS2/PS1 are all completely different systems. They all have different hardware components and their games are all programmed to run on those components. Those components would have to be included into the PS5 hardware in order to run those games and that would cost money. The PS5 is already expensive, and Sony didn’t think the added cost of backwards compatibility was worth raising the price of the system more.
PS3/PS2/PS1 are all completely different systems. They all have different hardware components and their games are all programmed to run on those components. Those components would have to be included into the PS5 hardware in order to run those games and that would cost money. The PS5 is already expensive, and Sony didn’t think the added cost of backwards compatibility was worth raising the price of the system more.
Xbox 360 onwards have all been a lot closer to a general purpose PC than the custom hardware consoles used to be. Xboxes run Windows so Xbox games are built to run on Windows on 1 or 2 hardware configurations per generation
Playstations before the 4 were all quirky and all ran their own special weird operating system.
The PS3 used the [Cell processor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor)) which was an 8 core chip well before its time so all PS3 games had to be made to use wayyy more cores than even PC games had access to. PS2 had a fully custom CPU designed by Sony specifically for running console games
Emulating an Xbox One is easy, its just a computer pretending to be dumber but with no weird quirks to emulate. Emulating a PS3 is hard because you need to emulate all the special hardware in the Cell processor including any weird quirks/mistakes that may have been used as cheats by the game devs. To pull that off you need something significantly more powerful than the Cell processor was
Older playstation emulators do exist, but its not necessarily in Sony’s interest to freely provide and maintain them when they could instead get a cut of remastered/remade games
Xbox 360 onwards have all been a lot closer to a general purpose PC than the custom hardware consoles used to be. Xboxes run Windows so Xbox games are built to run on Windows on 1 or 2 hardware configurations per generation
Playstations before the 4 were all quirky and all ran their own special weird operating system.
The PS3 used the [Cell processor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor)) which was an 8 core chip well before its time so all PS3 games had to be made to use wayyy more cores than even PC games had access to. PS2 had a fully custom CPU designed by Sony specifically for running console games
Emulating an Xbox One is easy, its just a computer pretending to be dumber but with no weird quirks to emulate. Emulating a PS3 is hard because you need to emulate all the special hardware in the Cell processor including any weird quirks/mistakes that may have been used as cheats by the game devs. To pull that off you need something significantly more powerful than the Cell processor was
Older playstation emulators do exist, but its not necessarily in Sony’s interest to freely provide and maintain them when they could instead get a cut of remastered/remade games
Playing Xbox One games on Series X is like playing PS4 games on PS5. Fundamentally, these consoles are not that different, so most of the time you can make the games compatible with a reasonable amount of effort (it will still take *some* effort to ensure the games work properly). In this area, Sony and Microsoft are roughly on par with each other.
However, it requires more finesse to play games from older consoles. The Xbox 360 honestly has more in common with a Nintendo Wii than it does with a modern Xbox. So, as others have mentioned, you need a setup called an “emulator”, which allows the modern Xbox to “play pretend” that it is an Xbox 360 so that the old games will be happy with it.
This is a *lot* of work to keep up to customer standards–go to any fan emulator community, and you’ll find complaints about emulation problems on certain games. This is fine for hobbyists but not acceptable for an official release. See [this interview in Eurogamer](https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2017-xbox-one-x-back-compat-how-does-it-actually-work) for some explanation on the amount of work that needs to be done in order to support compatibility.
My personal opinion: one of Microsoft’s flagship products is Windows, so they have a lot of experience with writing and running programs that target a wide variety of devices. It’s possible that Sony may lack the technical expertise or manpower to make PS1/2/3 compatibility happen in a financially profitable way.
Source: 12 years work experience as a software engineer in the Xbox division
Playing Xbox One games on Series X is like playing PS4 games on PS5. Fundamentally, these consoles are not that different, so most of the time you can make the games compatible with a reasonable amount of effort (it will still take *some* effort to ensure the games work properly). In this area, Sony and Microsoft are roughly on par with each other.
However, it requires more finesse to play games from older consoles. The Xbox 360 honestly has more in common with a Nintendo Wii than it does with a modern Xbox. So, as others have mentioned, you need a setup called an “emulator”, which allows the modern Xbox to “play pretend” that it is an Xbox 360 so that the old games will be happy with it.
This is a *lot* of work to keep up to customer standards–go to any fan emulator community, and you’ll find complaints about emulation problems on certain games. This is fine for hobbyists but not acceptable for an official release. See [this interview in Eurogamer](https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2017-xbox-one-x-back-compat-how-does-it-actually-work) for some explanation on the amount of work that needs to be done in order to support compatibility.
My personal opinion: one of Microsoft’s flagship products is Windows, so they have a lot of experience with writing and running programs that target a wide variety of devices. It’s possible that Sony may lack the technical expertise or manpower to make PS1/2/3 compatibility happen in a financially profitable way.
Source: 12 years work experience as a software engineer in the Xbox division
PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox series X/S all share the same x86 architecture. In a sense, they speak the same underlying language, which similar to PCs.
Older PlayStation models and Xbox 360 used completely different architectures (cell, PowerPC, MIPS, etc.). With a powerful system it’s possible to simulate (emulate) another type of system by translating all the instructions and figure out how it would act.
PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox series X/S all share the same x86 architecture. In a sense, they speak the same underlying language, which similar to PCs.
Older PlayStation models and Xbox 360 used completely different architectures (cell, PowerPC, MIPS, etc.). With a powerful system it’s possible to simulate (emulate) another type of system by translating all the instructions and figure out how it would act.
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