Sony Patents Possible PS5 Backward Compatibility Method Invented by Mark Cerny

The house of PlayStation, Sony Interactive Entertainment, registered a patent with the Japan Patent Office which seems to have “PS5” written all over it.

The patent describes a method that allows a device to check whether an application is a legacy application (IE: designed for an older device) or not.

If it isn’t, it returns its own correct CPU ID, if it is indeed a legacy application, it returns a spoofed CPU ID basically allowing the processor to impersonate the one used in the older device for backward compatibility purposes.

While there is no way to be sure that this will be used on the PS5, how whatever Sony’s next-generation console will be called, the inventor of this method is Mark Cerny, who is well known as the lead architect behind the PS4.

Of course, we don’t have a confirmation that Cerny is currently working on PS5 either, but it at least stands to reason to believe that this is possible.

As usual, this kind of information should be taken with a grain of salt, because patents don’t always result in actual products, but the timing of this filing certainly doesn’t appear completely random.

One thing is for sure: it would be pretty strange for the PS5 not to feature backward compatibility, as it would basically reset the success achieved with the PS4 going into the next generation, which would be a quite questionable move.

Source: Japan Patent Office via hokanko-alt (thanks for the tip: NanoGuidingStar and Alternator)