Sony Seems Poised To Abandon The PS4 For The PS5

Despite radio silence regarding a full-length Astro’s Playroom, Sony’s fall showcase was nothing if not a success. But between the splashy trailers and genuinely surprising announcements, one thing was clear: Sony seems poised to leave PlayStation 4 owners behind.

Of the 18 games shown off yesterday, nine are currently listed as PS5-only releases. (Some, including spiffed up versions of GTA V, Uncharted 4, and Uncharted: Lost Legacy, are also coming to PC.) But just seven—of which six we’ve seen before—are coming out for both PS4 and PS5.

Breaking it down, these games are coming to both PS4 and PS5:

• Eidos Montreal’s Guardians of the Galaxy game, out October 26.
• The next God of War, which after all of that really is called God of War Ragnarok.
• Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a Borderlands spinoff starring everyone’s favorite/least-favorite profane child. That’s out March 25, 2022.
• Rainbow Six Extraction, née Quarantine, is slated for January 22, 2022.
• The long-overdue Alan Wake remaster.
• Gran Turismo 7, finally confirmed for a March 4, 2022, release. Zoom, zoom.
• The kid-friendly Tchia.

And the following are planned as PS5-only:

• Arkane’s Deathloop, which comes out next week, and which we’ve seriously seen enough of already, I’m sold, just let me play the damn game!
• A Wolverine game from Insomniac. No release date or window.
• Spider-Man 2, also from Insomniac, planned for 2023.
• A remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, one of the most adored RPGs of all time.
• Project Eve, an action game that eludes easy explanation but nonetheless looks bananas.
• Forspoken, which you may remember was announced a million years ago as Project Athia, comes out in the spring.
• The horror-action game Ghostwire: Tokyo still doesn’t have a release date but, despite speculation that it’d release across generations, PlayStation says it’s PS5-only.
• The fantasy-themed battle royale Bloodhunt.
• Not totally sure if this counts as a game or not, but Radiohead’s Kid A Mnesia, whatever the heck it ends up being, will be PS5-only.

Of course, Sony has historically played coy with this stuff. Before the PS5 officially hit the market last November, there was some uncertainty over whether or not Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales would come out on PS4. (It did.) And it wasn’t always clear if two of the platform’s marquee exclusives—Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok—would launch across generations, as well. (They are.) So, yes, there’s always the chance that Sony releases any of these PS5-only games on PS4 too.

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But that seems a scant possibility. Many of yesterday’s showcased games are coming out several years into the console generation, at a point where “next-gen” may no longer be an applicable term. By then, players will expect more: better visuals, cooler features, more, more, more. It’s not that mind-blowing games can’t come out for both PS4 and PS5. But the games truly pushing the technological envelope have, so far, come out on the console with more horsepower, unburdened from having to come out on an older, lower-powered machine.

Question for the room: If you’ve been hunting for a PS5, how’s that going?