Sony's next Playstation console will be able to stream Playstation 3 games directly to your television, sources "familiar" with Sony's next-gen plans told the Wall Street Journal today. The report suggests that the streaming of current-gen games will be paired with new, next-gen titles being sold on optical media through the usual retail channels to form a hybridization of digital media reliance and the usual physical media capabilities that we've all come to expect from home consoles. 

This game streaming would likely be thanks to Sony's acquisition of streaming service Gaikai, which is said to be integrated into the Playstation 4 on a core level. 

This would all but eliminate the need for backwards compatibility should the rumors be true, and allow for the internal architecture of the next Playstation to do something drastically different while still retaining the ability to play older games. However, similar rumors of a full suite of PS2 games being available for download at the PS3's launch never really went anywhere aside from a few "Classics" seeing a later release on PSN, so we'll have to wait for Wednesday's full reveal to get all the details.