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You can play PS4 games on PS5 with an external hard drive

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By Alex Avard published 18 March 2020

Sony confirms the backwards compatibility feature during its PS5 specs lecture

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The PS5 will be capable of installing and playing PS4 games from an external hard drive containing the titles downloaded from the current generation console, Sony and PlayStation has confirmed.

The news was announced during today's Road to PS5 online livestream, in which the system's lead architect Mark Cerny provided a wealth of new information about the PS5 specs.

Read more

(Image credit: Sony)

PS5 load times were eliminated to "give the game designer freedom" to make whatever they want

"Expandability of our [Solid State Drive] is going to be quite important," explained Cerny."Flash is costly and you may very well want to add storage to whatever we put in the console. 

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"The kind of storage you need depends on how you're going to use it. If you have an extensive PS4 library [...] then a large external hard drive is ideal. You can leave your games on the hard drive and play them directly from there, saving the pricier SSD storage for your PS5 titles, or you can copy the PS4 titles directly to the SSD. If your purpose in adding more storage is to play PS5 titles, though, ideally you will add to your SSD storage." 

Cerny went on to stress that Sony "will be supporting certain M2 SSDs" (a.k.a. third party SSDs) to be compatible with PS5, explaining that "these are internal drives that you can get on the open market and can install on the day on the PS5."

You can find out more about how to watch the full PS5 reveal live stream, or stay tuned to GamesRadar for the lastest breakdowns and biggest info from the online event. 

For more, check out all the biggest new games of 2020 to keep an eye on, or watch our latest episode of Dialogue Options below.

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Alex Avard
Alex Avard
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Former Features Writer

Alex is a former Features Writer at GamesRadar+, which once made him responsible for gracing the internet with as many of my words as possible, including reviews, previews, interviews, and more. Lucky internet!

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