Sony PS5 will be Backwards Compatible Launching after Xbox Scorpio, Says Dev

According to Thomas Mahler – the developer of Ori And The Blind Forest – PS5 will be backwards compatible and will launch after the release of Microsoft’s Xbox Scorpio. Players will see games announced that will not be exclusive to the Sony’s next generation console as the move “hurts” developers.

Thomas Mahler: Sony PS5 will be Backwards Compatible Like Xbox Scorpio

Recently, Mahler took to NeoGAF and said that the PlayStation 4 Pro is “half-assed” while the Xbox Scorpio will be a “full-blown next-gen machine.” He has since added more stuff to it to clarify what he meant by the fully-fledged generation upgrade.

Here’s my prediction: When Sony announces their PS5 (which will probably happen after Scorpio releases), you’ll hear that it’ll also be compatible to your entire PS4 library (since it’s – like the PS4Pro – going to be another hardware upgrade based on the same architecture). You’ll also see games that are going to be announced that will not be exclusive only to the PS5, since it just hurts developers.

A new console comes out and we go from a hardware platform that has 50 or so million installed units to, say, 5. So automatically, I would reach a MUCH smaller audience. So a lot of games will still be ‘forward-compatible’ – whether Sony forces that or not will be up to them.

Mahler further stated that it’s not the box itself what’s important, but the platform and the games available for those platforms. The box is just your access point and you should be able to pick a box based on your requirements.

So if you are a hardcore gamer who wants 60fps, you can get a box that could deliver the experience you need. You’ll just get more choice in the future.

As for the launch, PS5 will most likely be released after Xbox Scorpio. It doesn’t make sense for Sony to release it sooner than that given it’s not been long enough since PS4 Pro has been out.

My prediction is that we’re going to get the Xbox Scorpio by the end of this year and then early next we’ll start hearing whispers of the next-gen PS5. Finally, Sony will launch its new console sometime in 2019, and I personally believe that it’s going to a more powerful and upgraded PS4 Pro.

I also agree that the PS5 will be backwards compatible. I don’t think Sony will abandon AMD at any time soon especially after we’ve heard about AMD’s Infinity Fabric stuff that would make it a little bit easier for the chipmaker to do respins and make changes to a particular hardware.

Will Xbox Scorpio be “Half-assed” Like The PS4 Pro?

First things first, the Ori developer apologized for his comments on PS4 Pro and said that he didn’t intend to offend anyone.

This is the second time already that I took part in some discussion on GAF only to then see something I thought was a somewhat innocent comment (again, calling a platform half-assed definitely wasn’t the nicest way of putting things, I know. I’m not a native English speaker and sometimes my wording can come off as a bit rude) to blow up in my face after the press picked up on it. I’m just a dev who loves games and take part in these passionate discussions.

To me, calling a platform half-asses is a rude statement but at the end of the day it’s his own opinion on it. Personally, I think the concept of PS4 Pro being called half-assed is because a lot of people are disappointed with the system.

One of the reasons that I know a lot of people are pissed off Pro is because it can’t technically render 4K; the console uses “checkerboard rendering” to essentially upscale base 1080p res to 4K.

There are other things as well, like the fact that it doesn’t have a 4K blu-ray player and that the CPU is slower than we expected it to be. We expected it to be a high-clocked Jaguar rather than running at 2.1GHz that only provides a minimal bump in FPS.

That being said, I don’t think the PS4 Pro is a bad system, I just don’t think it is quite what we expected. For a lot of folks who own a regular PS4, Pro is probably not enough to grant an upgrade unless you’ve got like specific usage scenerios.

On the other hand, if you don’t own a PS4 and you’re just looking to buy a new console then I can certainly see the appeal of buying a Pro over a vanilla PS4 because the price difference is not enough to make you really turned off, but that’s just my opinion.

As for if the Xbox Scorpio could be half-assed, I can’t comment on it bacause we don’t know much about it right now. What’s confirmed so far is that it will feature an eight CPU cores, over 320GB/s of memory bandwidth and six TFLOPS of compute power. Furthermore, the console will come out optimized by AMD.

According to a previous leak, Project Scorpio will be powered by AMD’s latest and greatest Ryzen and Vega technology customized by Microsoft. Right now, there is no confirmation of this, but if accurate, Scorpio will definitely not be an half-assed.