Sony has confirmed that its next generation console, the PlayStation 6, will feature full backwards compatibility with that feeling you had when you first turned on a PS1 and watched the Sony logo shimmer into view while your mum called you down for tea.
The announcement comes as the gaming industry continues its relentless march towards letting you play absolutely everything you’ve ever played before, but slightly prettier and with more achievements that don’t mean anything.
“We heard players loud and clear,” said Jennifer Bartlett, Sony’s Senior Vice President of Nostalgia Retention. “They want to revisit those formative gaming experiences. Not just the games themselves, which obviously they can already do on seventeen different platforms, but that specific emotion of being eleven years old with no responsibilities and the entire summer holiday stretching ahead of you.”
The PS6 will reportedly use proprietary DualSense technology to recreate the exact sensation of your dad asking if you’re winning, even though you’re clearly losing to Sephiroth for the eighth time. Advanced haptic feedback will simulate the weight of having nowhere to be on a Saturday morning.
Early beta testers have praised the console’s ability to make them feel genuine excitement about a new game release, rather than the mild sense of obligation they currently experience when scrolling through their backlog of 247 unfinished titles.
“It’s remarkable,” said Tom Richardson, a 34 year old IT consultant from Basingstoke who owns every console but mainly watches YouTube videos about games instead of playing them. “I booted up the PS6 and suddenly I cared about a game’s story again. I wasn’t thinking about my mortgage or whether I’d put the bins out. I just wanted to see what happened next.”
The console will also be compatible with that thing where you and your mates would all crowd around one telly to play GoldenEye, back when ‘playing together’ meant being in the same room rather than hearing a teenager from Denmark call you a slur through a headset.
Industry analysts suggest the move is a direct response to Xbox’s recent announcement that their next console would be backwards compatible with your GCSE results before you messed them up, and Nintendo’s plans for a Switch 2 that works with your genuine belief that you might be good enough to go professional one day.
The PlayStation 6 is expected to launch in late 2027 at a price point that will make you feel the same shock your parents felt when they saw how much a PS2 cost. Pre-orders will include a special edition that comes with the ability to enjoy a game’s graphics without immediately wondering if your GPU can handle ray tracing.
Sony has confirmed the console will not be backwards compatible with having enough free time to actually finish Baldur’s Gate 3.