I specified one generation of hardware backwards compatibility; beyond that software emulation would be more than sufficient.

The PS5 is backwards compatible with all but ~6 PS4 titles. Sure that’s entirely because of the shared x86-64 architecture, but it makes the PS4 stand out like a sore thumb for its lack of direct generational backwards compatibility.

By the end of the PS3’s lifecycle the Cell processor has been die-shrunk multiple times, reducing power consumption, heat output and PCB space required. It could then share the rest of the PS4s existing IO chips and circuitry.

There was literally no reason for backwards compatibility to be removed beyond corporate greed. Blindly accepting it, and actually trying to justify that as a good thing is one of the key reasons this hobby has gone down the toilet.