PS5 backward compatibility will support almost all of 'the top 100 PS4 games' with more coverage coming later

During PlayStation's "The Road to PS5" presentation today, lead architect Mark Cerny talked about the specs of the PlayStation 5 and what developers can expect from the console. While it's been known for some time that the PlayStation 5 would be backward compatible with PlayStation 4 games, there's a few things right now that aren't clear.

During Cerny's talk, he mentioned the different compatibility modes the PlayStation 5 hardware can be set to, allowing compatibility with PlayStation 4 titles. Cerny then stated that "We recently took a look at the top 100 PlayStation 4 titles, as ranked by play time, and we're expecting almost all of them them to be playable at launch on PlayStation 5."

A post on PlayStation Blog, rounding up the highlights of Cerny's presentation, doesn't offer any clarification. The statement on the blog reads "Lastly, we're excited to confirm that the backwards compatibility features are working well. We recently took a look at the top 100 PS4 titles as ranked by play time, and we're expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PS5. With more than 4000 games published on PS4, we will continue the testing process and expand backwards compatibility coverage over time."

To be quite blunt, we don't understand what that means. It's possible that the top 100 games on PS4 was being used for reference and games below the top 100 will also run, while it's also possible that those are the only games being considered right now. We simply don't know and we'll be attempting to get clarification from Sony.

In the meantime, you can find the full presentation on the specs of the PlayStation 5 below.