Sony Patent Suggests Backwards Compatibility For PS Classics

As of recent, backwards compatibility has been the talk of the town among console players. With companies like Microsoft focusing entirely on backwards compatibility, it’s obvious that Sony Interactive Entertainment would jump in on the action, too. Unfortunately, PlayStation consoles don’t allow players to access previous-generation console games right now, unlike Xbox consoles.

However, it seems like this is changing, as a recently published patent from the company suggests that backwards compatibility could be coming to the PlayStation 5.

A couple of days ago, Tippy, a user on Twitter, came across a recent patent from Sony Interactive Entertainment titled, ‘SPOOFING CPUID FOR BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY,’ published at the European Patent Office by Mark Evan Cerny, that advocates for backwards compatibility in PlayStation consoles. “When a new version of a computer system (a “new device”) is released it is desirable for the applications written for a previous version of the system (a “legacy device”) to run flawlessly on the new device,” reads the patent.

https://twitter.com/Tippy_Power/status/1464751870694539272

“To facilitate backwards compatibility, a computing device may respond to a call from an application for information regarding a processor on the computing device by returning information regarding a different processor than the processor on the computing device,” states the abstract for the patent.

According to the patent, to implement backwards compatibility, the console will use a method called “CPU-Spoofing,” or “Spoofed Processor ID,” as the patent suggests. Essentially, CPU-Spoofing is a CPU-dispatching feature that allows the user to provide different implementations for the functionality of the CPU and chooses the most efficient implementation based on the target architecture. In the case of backwards compatibility, the patent insists that “a processor on a new device can execute the opcode or supply the register value in such a way that different processor information is returned in response to a call from a legacy application.”

With backwards compatibility for PlayStation consoles, players can access upscaled versions of classic PlayStation games from PlayStation 1, all the way to PlayStation 3, on PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 consoles. While Microsoft Corporation has had this feature for a few years now, it’s amazing to know that Sony Interactive Entertainment is doing the same, which obviously benefits players.

What do you think about this? Do let us know down in the comments below!

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