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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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
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