Sony must be preparing something. Otherwise, games released two generations earlier wouldn’t appear on PlayStation 5 PlayStation Store.

If you look at a PlayStation 3 game on the PlayStation Store for the PlayStation 5, which has been available since November 2020, Dead or Alive 5, for example, is not listed under PlayStation Now, but has a price tag underneath. Other examples of this have also emerged, including Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and Bejeweled, where Sony offers payment options.

Or maybe it could, as there is currently no way to buy a proper PlayStation 3 game from the PlayStation 5’s Store. To add to the already messy story, the PlayStation Now streaming service doesn’t make the PS3 version of Dead or Alive 5 available in Europe, so there’s no way to stream the brawler without some trickery (VPN, region switching…).

And the timing is suspicious, as a patent has recently surfaced from Mark Cerny, the in-house designer of the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 5. (The two Knack on the PlayStation 4 are also his creation.) His patent was called “backward compatibility through the use of spoof clock and fine grain frequency control.” It may suggest that Sony has finally figured out how to support games “beyond” the PlayStation 4, which is a serious shortcoming of the PlayStation 5 compared to the Xbox Series…

And the patent brings us to the rumoured Spartacus codename, which could rival the (Xbox) Game Pass. The first category of subscription would be the equivalent of the current PlayStation Plus (online multiplayer, free monthly games). The second would give access to a more extensive catalogue (PlayStation Plus Collection, only in a broader sense?). At the same time, the third would offer more extended demos, game streaming (=PlayStation Now), and games for PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP.

Something is fishy around Sony. Spartacus is rumoured to launch in the spring…

Source: VGC