One of the best selling points of the Xbox One is its ability to play select Xbox 360 titles. Honestly, it’s not fun having to hope that Sony is going to remaster your favourite PlayStation 3 game, pay for it and then find out it’s not even that great on a current-gen console.
It’s a common complaint from PlayStation gamers, but it looks like Sony might be looking to change that with its next-gen console.
It seems that Sony has registered a patent via the Japan Patent Office and it looks like very promising stuff, potentially suggesting the tech will come from none other than Mark Cerny, the lead architect on the PS4 [via Twinfinite].
The patent describes a method that allows a device to check whether or not a game is current or last-gen. It can then return a spoof CPU ID that will allow the game to run on the newer processor.
The patent reads: “Each asset such as a texture called for by legacy software such as a legacy computer game software has a unique identifier associated with it.
“The unique identifier can be rendered by imposing a hash on the asset, and then the asset stored with its identifier in a data structure. An artist remasters the textures for presentation on a higher resolution display than envisioned in the original software, and stores them back in the data structure with their identifiers.
“The original software is then played on the higher resolution display, with asset (such as texture) calls being intercepted, identified, and the data structure entered to retrieve the remastered asset having a matching identifier. The remastered asset is then inserted on the fly into the game presentation.”
The patent sounds like it’s hinting at backwards compatibility for the PS5 as opposed to the ‘Remastered’ edition.
It’s about time that Sony considered the backwards compatibility route for its consoles, because yeah – buying a Remastered edition of your favourite game just takes up room on your shelf and money out of your pocket…
Do you think we’ll be getting this feature for the next-gen PlayStation?
Featured Image Credit: Sony.