Jim Ryan confirms that PS5 won't have compatibility with PS3 and previous consoles

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan in an interview right after the PlayStation 5 Showcase, where he talked a lot about the PS5; including its backward compatibility feature.

After the development team tested and verified all games released for PlayStation4, it was found that PlayStation5 could have up to 99% compatibility with the predecessor console, according to Jim Ryan.

Also mentioned was the PlayStation Plus collection, which allows PS5 owners to play select PS4 games such as Persona 5, Monster Hunter: World and Mortal Kombat X for free.
 

When asked about compatibility with previous consoles, Jim Ryan concluded:

Famitsu: We were also surprised when we heard that it will have 99% compatibility with PS4 titles. By the way, will there be compatibility with PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles?

Jim Ryan: We keep in mind the engineering specialized for the PS5, as we produced the device. In the midst of that, the PS4 already has 100 million players; we thought they ought to want to play PS4 titles on the PS5 as well indeed, so we included compatibility with the PS4. While implementing that, we also focused our efforts on taking in the high-speed SSD and the new controller DualSense at the same time. So, unfortunately, we couldn’t reach the implementation of such compatibilities.

This statement by SIE CEO Jim Ryan further confirms that the PS5 will not be backwards compatible with the PS1, PS2 and PS3 games. In early August 2020, Ubisoft updated the support page on its Australian website with a note suggesting that PlayStation 5 will only be compatible with previous versions of PlayStation 4 games and not for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation titles.

font: Siliconera