News hardware PS3: Sony has not abandoned the games and accessories of its console, the proof
Published on 05/07/2022 at 06:40
The reputation of the complex architecture of the PS3 is well established, and this slows down Sony’s ambitions in terms of backward compatibility and retrogaming. The Japanese manufacturer is looking for solutions and a recently filed patent suggests that it is making good progress on the subject.
If Sony has managed, over the years, to update its PS1, PS2 or PS4 games to make them backward compatible with its various game consoles, for titles released from the PS3, the situation is different. It must be said that the PlayStation 3 is a console that remains very complex even today, due to its atypical architecture. Featuring IMB’s Cell processor and Nvidia RSX graphics card, the PS3 has always come with a reputation as a console that was complicated to develop on.
This observation has been playing tricks on Sony for years, and in particular since the question of the backward compatibility of consoles is one of the criteria that it is important to value when launching a new machine. When the PS5 hit the market, many gamers were disappointed to find that only PS4 games could be launched on the console: many hoped for support for PS3 games at the same time.
Sony and the PS3, a hopeful patent
Sony is currently well on its way to solving its problem : it is in any case what one can think by exploring the 52 pages of the patent named « Systems and Methods for Converting a Legacy Code into an Updated Code » which was validated on June 14 by the US Patent Office.
Among the many information that can be found there, we can see on a visual illustration of the well-known accessories of the owners of the PS3 : the PlayStation Move, the PlayStation Eye camera, the DualShock 3 controller, but also the console’s card reader are present on the diagram.
The idea here would be for Sony to put in place a way to update the code related to the operation of the PS3 to make it compatible with a more modern machine. From there to seeing the PS5 at the end of the road, there is only one step.
Towards compatibility with the PS5?
Another part of the patent suggests that PS3 games could be integrated into Sony’s PS Now catalogvia a system for decoding the source code of the games directly within the network. The PS3 game would be available on the service’s servers but the player could access it from his console, at home, with an adapted rendering. A proposal that could be made in addition to support for games on their original disc support.
If Sony seems to be considering making PS3 accessories backwards compatible with a newer console, this does not mean that a concrete project is in the pipeline. Like all large high-tech companies, Sony files hundreds of patents each year and only a handful of ideas actually materialize.
However, the PS5 is only at the beginning of its existence as a console, and we can very well imagine a favorable evolution towards a return of PS3 games to the machine. Sony has time to think about it and potentially create a surprise in the coming years.