There recently was a new game released which included PS2 titles that all ran on a PS4 using an emulator. In light of this, Sony also confirms that they are working on bringing more PS2 games to the current console.
The topic of backward compatibility regained traction once more as a new PS4 game (Special Edition Star Wars Battlefront) included PSN codes to download additional titles. These include:
Super Star Wars
Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter
Star Wars: Racer Revenge
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter
From those, three of which are titles from the classic PS2 console and were reported to be up and running using what they can deduce as an emulator (you can read how they came to this conclusion and more about the picture quality at Eurogamer.net).
On a related note, Techradar shot a question to Sony regarding the existence of the said emulator and received a confirmation from a representative:
“We are working on utilizing PS2 emulation technology to bring PS2 games forward to the current generation. We have nothing further to comment at this point in time.”
This simply means that backward compatibility for the PS4 is officially possible. For now, we’ll just have to wait for the announcement of which games will be ported over — could be a lot considering the vast library of PS2 games released.
They maybe working on an emulation, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be pushed to the consumers. The most probable case will be PS2 re-releases to the PSN will be encapsulated to an emulator shell for it to run.
For a company – Sony as a corporation – that isn’t doing too well, and with the PS4 being the choice of console for the 8th generation. The above strategy seems to be the logical direction if they are going to make an emulator.
Unless of course, they are one-upping Microsoft when they announced at E3 about their X360 backwards compatibility – of sort – for their XBox One.