With no Cell processor in the PlayStation 5 and a different architecture, Sony will have to force games from the previous two generations to run locally rather than from the cloud.

The PlayStation 5 is able to play PlayStation 4 games with backward compatibility out of the box, and then the PlayStation Plus 2022 revamp made PS1, PS2 and PSP titles available on the platform, although for the three older platforms it’s just a curated list, meaning you can’t play a CD or DVD inserted in the optical drive (let’s not talk about the PSP’s UMDs…). But the PS3 is an exception: you can only play them from the cloud, and you need a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription…

The PlayStation 3 was notoriously difficult to develop for. The Cell processor was more powerful than the Xbox 360, but the PS3 was not only behind in terms of launch (Microsoft’s console debuted a year earlier), but also in terms of price, as Sony’s console cost a lot more. There have been several rumors that PlayStation 3 emulation could be possible on PlayStation 5, but now a new patent has surfaced that could finally make it a reality.

Mark Cerny, the internal architect of PlayStation 5 (and PlayStation 4), filed a patent on February 9, which was published on June 27. The title (Backward Compatibility Testing of Software in a Mode That Attempts to Induce Skew) says a lot. The patent describes a mechanism that provides a device (presumably the PlayStation 5) with a timing test mode that induces skew. It’s a bit complicated, but the gist is that the skew creates timing variations that affect the software running on it. The PS3’s Cell processor allocates different tasks to different cores, rather than each core working on the same task (which is what happens on modern x86 architectures).

The support layer that creates the skew for the PlayStation 5 would guarantee that PS3 games would run natively on the modern console. But when will that happen? The emulation of PS2 games isn’t perfect either, and that’s much weaker hardware…

Source: GameRant