After largely ignoring the feature for a couple generations, Sony is once again pushing backward compatibility heavily for the upcoming PlayStation 5. That said, it isn’t entirely clear how extensive BC will be – Sony has said most of the PS4’s top games will be supported, but hasn’t promised you’ll be able to pop in just any PS4 game into your PS5 and play. Outside of the very top PS4 games, will we have to wait for Sony to test and whitelist titles before we can play them?

　　Thankfully, it sounds like that that won’t be the case. Popular streamer Lance McDonald, who seems to have some inside connections at Sony, recently posted a clarification about PS5 backwards compatibility. He’s since taken the tweet down “out of respect for the platform holder” (sounds like somebody yelled at him), but the Internet never forgets – here’s what he said…

　　There’s been some confusion about this in the past and I can clear it up now. The PlayStation 5 can run all PlayStation 4 games without per-game whitelisting. Sony continue[s] to test titles but the system will not prevent you from launching untested games.

　　Of course, take this with a grain of salt for now, but this all sounds very plausible given what Sony has already revealed about backward compatibility. Sony has said they’re testing individual PS4 games to see if they’ll work with the PS5 hardware, but they believe that the “overwhelming majority” will work properly (although they’ve only promised the top 100 PS4 titles will be fully compatible at the PS5’s launch). So, hopefully they do take the approach of just letting people try out whatever PS4 game they want without having to wait for it to be whitelisted.

　　What are your thoughts on PS5 backward compatibility? Is it a feature you expect to use a lot? Or will you strictly be playing PS5 games on your new console?