PlayStation Is Lagging Behind Xbox And Nintendo In One Critical Way

PlayStation Plus is removing 22 games from its Classic Catalog next month, a cyclical occurrence for the monthly subscription service. But while it’s expected that certain games will get removed from paid services like Xbox Game Pass, there’s something particularly frustrating about what’s being rotated out of PlayStation Plus this time around. And it once again highlights an insidious drawback of Sony’s ecosystem that both Nintendo and Xbox have had a much better approach towards.

Both 2006’s Resistance: Fall of Man and 2008’s Resistance 2, two classic PlayStation 3 games that are playable via cloud streaming on PlayStation 5, will no longer be part of PS Plus Extra and Premium starting May 20, 2025. These are both first-party published games from the team behind the PS5’s biggest exclusives and for some reason, there’s no way to play some of their most pivotal works on modern hardware.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. In 2022, when PlayStation shut down the first iteration of its cloud streaming service PlayStation Now, it removed the only way to enjoy certain legacy PS3 exclusives like Metal Gear Solid 4 without owning the original hardware and game. It’s also meant that some fantastic games from that period in Sony’s history, from the Infamous games to more niche titles like Killzone 2 and the Motorstorm series, have vanished.

It’s disappointing to see how PlayStation is handling certain parts of its legacy on modern hardware, especially when its competitors have done the opposite.

In 2017, Microsoft committed to making as many original Xbox and Xbox 360 games compatible with the Xbox One. It’s a feature that earned them a ton of goodwill when they desperately needed it. The commitment would later improve the value of the Series X, as customers locked in their ecosystem for over two decades had all the more reason to stay in it. Factor in the seamlessness of Smart Delivery, and it's easy to understand why it was worth the effort.

And while Nintendo has frequently wiped the slate clean when it comes to digital games (DSiWare games, 3DS game carts, and Wii-U games were all not compatible with their successors), it has made a noted effort to keep continuity between all of its titles starting with the super popular Switch. Even though the Switch 2’s backward compatibility function won’t be perfect, there’s at least an attempt to let the Switch’s impressive library live on in some capacity on the new hardware.

And of course, the company has done a great job of making its older classics readily available through Nintendo Switch Online, which as recently as this week has been getting new additions worth the renewal price.

Similar to Nintendo, PlayStation started fresh with the PlayStation 4. The PS5 could play the majority of the PS4’s library from day one with some performance bonuses to boot. But Sony hasn’t been as committed to making its deep library from the past easily accessible. It wasn’t until last year that select PlayStation 2 games were finally available for purchase on the PS5’s online store. Meanwhile, PS1 games debuted on PS Plus two years ago.

There are multiple factors at play. Many developers at the time spoke candidly about how difficult it was to make games for the PS3’s proprietary hardware. As incredibly powerful as it was, its architecture wasn’t great when porting PC games (unlike the Xbox 360’s DirectX-based hardware). Even today, perfectly emulating those games takes a bit more elbow grease.

So when there’s a perfectly great solution in making these games playable via streaming, it boggles my mind as to why PlayStation would remove that functionality from the service instead of expanding it. It can’t cost them much to keep those games on there. Unless of course there are bigger plans in the works. But Sony’s track record doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence.

While the PS5 has been a huge success for Sony, I wish that it would look at how its peers have tried to preserve their respective pasts. For players whose fondest gaming memories are tied to old PS2 and PS3 games, it’s a shame that Sony has little interest in letting people revisit those titles when so many of them are as good as they are.