One of the biggest selling points in the Xbox One’s favor the last few years, has been the impressive amount of work Microsoft has put in to ensure that a large portion of games from their earlier generation consoles will still work today. The backwards compatibility program effectively means that the library of games available grows rapidly over time, as older games are brought back to life for the new generation.

Now it seems that Sony is taking note of that success, with rumors that the next generation PlayStation will also feature backwards compatibility. The news comes via Gearnuke, which discovered a patent registered by Sony Interactive Entertainment America LLC titled ‘Remastering by emulation.’ While this patent was originally private, it was updated earlier this month and seems to point towards Sony’s desire to bring the past into light once again.

“Each asset such as a texture called for by legacy software such as a legacy computer game software has a unique identifier associated with it. The unique identifier can be rendered by imposing a hash on the asset, and then the asset stored with its identifier in a data structure. An artist remasters the textures for presentation on a higher resolution display than envisioned in the original software, and stores them back in the data structure with their identifiers. The original software is then played on the higher resolution display, with asset (such as texture) calls being intercepted, identified, and the data structure entered to retrieve the remastered asset having a matching identifier. The remastered asset is then inserted on the fly into the game presentation.”

This certainly seems to point to backwards compatibility, with older games getting a face-lift before relaunching in the modern age. For more on the PlayStation 5, check out what we know so far, and what else is rumored, here.