They are clearly able to emulate the games based on the PS1 and PS2 games being available on the digital storefront.
Edit: Thank you all for the informative replies.
In: Technology
Same reason they removed the ability for PS3’s to read PS2 discs after just one year – it’s expensive to implement backwards compatibility, and they crunched the numbers and decided it’s smarter from a financial standpoint to remove that capability to reduce the cost of the console and sell more units.
PS5’s are backwards compatible with PS4’s because from the PS4 gen onward, game consoles are basically just PC architecture in a smaller space, so there isn’t a ton of work that needs to be done to allow them to play the last-gen games (same reason your PC games from 3 years ago don’t stop working when you upgrade from a GTX 1070 to an RTX 3070).
PS3 had a vastly different architecture than current-gen systems; the PS2 had a vastly different architecture from that; and the PS1 had yet another different type of architecture.
Having said that – it’s totally *doable*. All PS3’s can play PS1 discs because it’s just software emulation, and later in the PS3’s life cycle, Sony developed a PS2 software emulator, which is what the “PS2 Classics” games you can buy on the PlayStation Network run on. Thing is, the PS2 software emulator isn’t super widely compatible, which is why they never unlocked the ability for it to boot games from an inserted disc – they validate the games’ functionality on the emulator, patch any issues, and then release the game to purchase on the PSN store; validating EVERY PS2 game in that capacity would be expensive and time-consuming.
In fact, the PS1 software emulator built into the PS3 **cannot** play certain PS1 discs – for example, *Tomb Raider* and *Tomb Raider II* can’t be played from a physical disc in any PS3; but Sony patched the games and re-released them on the PSN store, so you *can* play them on a PS3, you just have to buy them from PSN.
PS3 games are a different beast entirely. The PS3’s architecture was very complex, and emulating it is very difficult. You’ll hear people refute this by saying PS3 emulation on PC is a thing, but here’s the problem with that – yeah, it’s *a thing*, and there are a handful of games that work flawlessly…but there’s a large chunk of games that don’t work at all, and the majority of the games that *do* work have some issues (ranging from minor to game-breaking) that Sony wouldn’t be willing to let slide on an officially-supported system.
Someone else mentioned the CD reading thing, and that’s a possibility too – I don’t know what kind of UHD Blu-Ray drive is in the PS5, and I don’t know if it has a CD laser or not. **If it doesn’t have a CD laser, then it is physically impossible for a PS5 to read a PS1 disc, or any CD-based PS2 game** (though it wouldn’t have any trouble with the majority of PS2 games were DVD-based). Missing hardware isn’t something you can patch in!
***TL;DR*** – it costs a lot of money and Sony crunched the numbers and decided it isn’t worth the investment.
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