PS5: PS3 games seen on the PS Store, backward compatibility on the way?

In early December, Bloomberg and Jason Schreier announced that Sony would be cooking up an answer to Xbox Game Pass. The Japanese company would have on the workbench the project Spartacus, a subscription service bringing together PS Now and PlayStation Plus, including many titles from past generations.

Everything would be planned for the spring, and proposed in the form of three offers whose contours would be as follows: the first level would more or less resemble what the PS Plus currently offers, the second would add to that many PS4 games or even PS5, while the third would also offer games from the PS1, PS2, PS3 and even PSP. At this time, Sony has made no announcements, but if Bloomberg was right, the wait won’t be very long. In the meantime, players dig through update data, source codes, and follow the evolution of the catalog of games on the PS Store.

And it seems that these digital explorers have unearthed something, since the pages of PS3 games have probably evolved. Until very recently, select a PS3 game automatically redirected to the PS Now streaming service. Recently, some games can be added to wishlist, and prices appeared on some records.

Various captures show in particular that Prince of Persia: The Two Kingdoms is offered at $13.49, or that Dead or Alive 5 is at £7.99. Combining this with information from Bloomberg, one might think that we are heading straight to PS3 game backwards compatibility support on PS5, either raw, or through the Spartacus project.

What’s more, a recent patent filed by Sony, and in which we find the names of Mark Cerny (designer of the PS4 and PS5) and David Simpsons (Naughty Dog), indicates that Sony is working on the subject, including reducing the frequency of the internal clock to allow older games to run.

However, be careful not to ignite too quickly, as it is quite possible that it is a display bug, related to an upcoming update or some other issue. For the moment the clues are piling up, but let’s wait for an official announcement from the manufacturer to get to the bottom of it.

Uhhh. Don’t panic, but a PS3 game should be priceless when viewed on a PS5. Unless…