Sony, in their latest PS5 conference, stated that PS5 backwards compatibility will launch at the same time that the console releases later this year.
Once released, you’ll be able to play your old PS4 games on your brand new PS5 Via external hard drive. This is the latest news on the console from Playstation and Sony which was reported on in the official PlayStation blog.
This new information was found during the “Road To PS5” Livestream when Mark Cerny (Playstation’s Lead member of architectural design) discussed a large amount of new information on the console, including capabilities and specs.
PS5 backwards compatibility: how it’ll work
“Expandability of our solid-state drive is going to be quite important,” described Mark Cerny.”Flash is costly and you may very well want to add storage to whatever we put in the console.”
“The kind of storage you need depends on how you’re going to use it. If you have an extensive PS4 library, then a large external hard drive is ideal. You can leave your games on the hard drive and play them directly from there, saving the pricier SSD storage for your PS5 titles, or you can copy the PS4 titles directly to the SSD. If your purpose in adding more storage is to play PS5 titles, though, ideally you will add to your SSD storage.”
Cerny continued to state that the PS5 “will be supporting certain M2 SSDs” (These being third party SSDs you can buy from different retailers) to have compatibility with PS5, and also further stated that “these are internal drives that you can get on the open market and can install on the day on the PS5.”
