Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst has revealed that God of War: Ragnarok and Gran Turismo 7 are both cross-gen titles that will release for both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Both Gran Turismo 7 and the next God of War are now slated for release in 2022.
In a Q&A for the PlayStation Blog, Hulst was asked about the PS4 and how it factors into the company’s first party titles. He said:
Where it makes sense to develop a title for both PS4 and PS5 — for Horizon Forbidden West, the next God of War, GT7 — we’ll continue looking at that. And if PS4 owners want to play that game, then they can. If they want to go on and play the PS5 version, that game will be there for them.
That being said, it’s also very important to have showpieces for PS5, hence the development of Returnal and Ratchet that are exclusive to PS5.
Previously thought to be PS5 exclusives, this will no doubt be a bit of a shock for those looking forward to God of War: Ragnarok and GT7. It also follows on from the surprise announcement in the run up to the PS5 release that Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Horizon Forbidden West are also cross-gen games.
The titles were revealed or announced at the PlayStation 5 console and game reveal event in July 2020, and in all four cases, they were initially only spoken of in terms of the then upcoming PlayStation 5. Trailers were marked with ‘PS5’, or in PS Blog posts called “First look at 9 new PS5 games” with no mention of the PS4 at all.
This is another major turn of events, considering that PlayStation boss Jim Ryan quite publicly came out with phrases like “we believe in generations” when talking up their strategy for the PlayStation 5 compared to the Xbox Series X|S from Microsoft. It turns out that Sony believes very strongly in cross-gen games, and they just didn’t want to admit it at the time.
It might actually be that Sony now has more cross-gen first party games than Microsoft does…
As Hulst puts it, “You can’t build a community of over 110 million PS4 owners and then just walk away from it, right? I think that’d be bad news for fans of PS4, and frankly not very good business.”
Source: PS Blog
MOVE
Oh dear. I remember when Microsoft Head said Xbox needed to stay relevant. So far it seems Sony is trying to do the opposit with PS5.
Thomas Harrison-Lord
This is… weird.
MrYd
Why is everyone saying those 2 games are coming to PS4? Did the entire internet just not read what he said??
He said “where it makes sense” to be cross-gen, lists 3 games where it probably does make sense, and says they’ll “continue looking at that”. Of those 3, Horizon Forbidden West is definitely getting a PS4 version. The others? Not been announced one way or the other yet, has it?
It does make sense though. They can’t be cheap games to make, and by the time they release, there are still going to be maybe 5 times as many PS4s to sell for. And they’ve still got other PS5 only games, so it seems like they do still believe in generations.
A vocal minority does seem to be very upset though. Looks like the same ones that were upset at PC versions of PS4 games. And they probably also don’t think it’s great when MS spend lots of money on Bethesda or whatever and limit who can play those games. Some people just want to have their cake, eat it, and then give it a bad review online afterwards.
Stefan L
I mean, it’s the PS Blog. Every discussion point (new IP, Bend Studios’ next game, etc.) was put on a platter for him, and he gives three examples when discussing cross-gen games (two of which are news, one of which isn’t), and then in the following paragraph gives two examples that are not cross-gen. He doesn’t explicitly state it, but there is no leeway (outside of a frankly crazy PR bungle) for this to be interpreted any differently.
Adrian Burrows
Excellent! Now I can hold off on having to buy a PS5 for another year or two.
Starman
“we believe in (Cross) generations” ?
Bocking87
100% this is a result of PS5 stock shortages.
I want as many “next gen only” experiences as possible but I totally understand that it makes no sense to release these big expensive-to-make games on a platform that has a small player base.
If it’s relatively straight forward to tweak these games to run on PS4, why not?