In light of media reports about Jim Ryan saying PS5 is not backwards compatible with PS1, 2 and 3, HipHopGamer’s doubling down didn’t make sense to me initially; but after pondering over the contradiction and giving the spec sheets of PS4/pro and PS5 another glance over to see what was different about their optical drives, something struck me as peculiar. Look at the optical drives for each system...
PS4/pro:
- Optical Drive: BD x6 CAV,
DVD x8
CAV (read only)
PS5
- Ultra HD Blu-ray (66G/100G) ~10xCAV
- BD-ROM (25G/50G) ~8x CAV
-
BD-R/RE (25G/50G) ~8x
CAV
-
DVD ~3.2x
CLV
Doesn’t it seem odd to you that SIE would replace PS4/pro's faster DVD 8x CAV mode with a much slower DVD 3.2x CLV mode?...
It seems odd to me because
PS1 reads CDs at 2x speed in
CLV mode only. And on top of that, according to some very old posts by two devs (inpHilltr8r and Falafada (the latter is said to be an SCE dev)) on another forum, PS2 reads DVDs at 2x speed in CLV mode (
in CAV mode PS2 reads DVDs at 4x speed). Here's some of what they had to say about PS2’s drive...
(note: If you care to read the threads in full, search the following: ‘PS3 vs 360 Drive Speed Question’, the first result that pops up should be from Beyond3D. If you only care to read the dev posts, jump to pg.4)…
"
The PS2 drive can operate in either CAV or CLV mode. CAV is faster, but less stable, and only works on one layer of a dual layer disc.
We ran the drive in CLV mode, and I don't want to revisit the amount of time I spent laying out the 8GB of data we crammed onto the disc." -- inpHilltr8r
"From what I remember
CLV defaults to minimum CAV speed, meaning you get 2xDVD across the whole disc, instead of only inner layer." -- Falafada
And there’s more. What's with the addition of a BD-R/RE ~8x CAV mode for PS5? This also seems odd to me because in the same forum thread a post was made (on pg. 5) by a third dev who in reply to a forum-goer's assumption that PS3's BD drive was CLV, said...
"Nope, we have an 8x
BD-R/RE drive that's P-
CAV..." -- archie4oz
As I’ve come to understand, P-CAV is a derivative of CAV that can run in both CLV and CAV modes.
The drive spins the disc in CAV mode when reading (or writing) near the inner part of the disc, then switches to CLV for the outer part of the disc.
On the surface, it appears PS5's optical drive has modes to read PS1, 2 and 3 discs. For me, this lends credence to HHG’s claim. Now here’s the conundrum: HHG said PS5 is backwards compatible with PS1, 2 and 3; Ryan said it isn’t… or so the media says…
I interpreted Ryan’s words to differently. Before I get into it, here’s the half-decent machine translation of the Q&A I read…
-- In the story, I was surprised that PS4 titles are 99% compatible. By the way, is it compatible with PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles? --
Famitsu
Ryan We have been building devices with a focus on PS5-specific engineering. Among them, PS4 already has 100 million players, so I thought that I would like to play PS4 titles on PS5 as well, so I introduced PS4 compatibility. While achieving that, we focused on incorporating high-speed SSDs and the new controller "DualSense" in parallel. So, unfortunately, compatibility with them has not been achieved. --
Jim Ryan
My interpretation of Ryan: PS4 compatibility is a PS5-specific ”device”. The high-speed SSD and DualSense are also PS5-specific devices; so unfortunately, PS1, 2 and 3 titles will not be compatible with
them (the high-speed SSD and DualSense).
If my interpretation is correct, then HHG will have been proven right about PS1, 2 and 3 backwards compatibility for PS5 working in conjunction with PS Now, and Jim Ryan will have maintained the element of surprise. In any event, we’ll find Soon’y enough…
“we are cloud-gaming pioneers, and
our vision should become clear as we head toward launch” --
Mark Cerny
