PlayStation 4 will get PlayStation 2 backward compatibility

When Sony told media at E3 2015 that it wasn’t interested in following Microsoft’s backward compatibility drive, it wasn’t telling the truth.

According to Wired, and an email from a Sony PlayStation representative, the PlayStation 4 console will use “PS2 emulation technology to bring PS2 games forward to the current generation.”

The representative suggests that the company’s currently “working on” achieving this, which suggests that we should see the feature arrive on the PlayStation 4 sometime in the near future. Hopefully.

The hint was perhaps dropped by the bundled legacy games that arrive with a particular Star Wars: Battlefront PlayStation 4 bundle. Eurogamer, thanks in part to the Digital Foundry, suggested that these titles are running their own emulators on the PlayStation 4.

Read more: PlayStation 4 to focus on future, won’t be getting backward compatibility

While the company has previously denied reports of backward compatibility or emulation for the PlayStation 4, it’s clearly something that the console gravely needs. Although it still leads this generation’s total sales war, the Xbox One reclaimed some ground on it in the month of October, while it’s rival consoles both feature emulation and backward compatibility to a degree.

The pioneer of this generation’s emulation love was the Nintendo Wii U, which can play titles from the likes of the Nintendo DS without much fuss.

There’s no word on when this PlayStation 2-on-PlayStation 4 emulation technology will filter down into consumer hardware for a larger number of titles, but if you happen to have a large number of PlayStation 2 titles just lying around, this will be welcome news to you.

Feature image: Deni Williams via Flickr