In an exclusive interview with PSU.com, U.K. developer Clever Beans has suggested that the likelihood of the PlayStation 4 being backwards-compatible with PS3 games is slim.
When questioned on the subject of backwards-compatibility on Sony’s next-generation console, Clever Bean’s directors Martin Turton and Andrew Newton said that they think “it is something that would be very difficult to achieve”, though they do go on to say that it could potentially be “handled using cloud-based streaming.”
With Sony acquiring the cloud-based streaming service Gaikai earlier this year, it’s extremely likely that it has plans to make use of the technology with the PlayStation 4, and though we still don’t know for sure exactly how it intends to implement streaming, it does look likely to be a viable solution to solve the backwards-compatibility dilemma.
With such a great range of titles available on PS3, users will certainly want to be able to play PS3 games on the next PlayStation console - and Sony will surely want to keep selling some of its triple-A titles to PS4 adopters. However, because of the radically different architecture of the new console, which is said to include the AMD x64 CPU and AMD Southern Islands GPU, a PS3 Blu-ray disc is rumoured to be unlikely to work and the option of making PS3 games available via PSN to download too expensive to emulate.
http://www.psu.com/a017607/PS4-backw...-via-the-cloud