One of the primary reasons for console players to upgrade their device is new games. However, it looks like Sony has forgotten how things work in their platform with their PS5 releases yesterday. The company announced that its latest exclusive Horizon: Forbidden West will be coming for PS4 as well. This has caused some mixed opinions in the fanbase. Let’s dive deeper into what the company intends to do with this decision and their thought process behind it.
Developers push out new games with each generation of the console featuring upgraded hardware. Not only does the upgraded hardware justify the game release on a newer platform. It also gives more people an incentive to upgrade. Most people assumed that will be the case for the PlayStation 5 as well. In the reveal event of the console Sone showed a bunch of new games for it. While some of these titles are meant for PS5 only people must understand the other choices as well.
The outrage from fans is partly because of Sony’s poor choice in marketing these new games. Sony labeled the upcoming titles as “Next-Gen Games”. This is misleading as it conveys the idea that these games are only meant for newer consoles. It can even hurt their games sales as well. Considering the fact that PS4 hardware is pretty dated now and most of the modern games require better hardware to run .Consequently if the new Horizon title is coming to PS4 perhaps it’s not that gen either.
Horizon: Forbidden West is not the first game coming to PS5 and PS4. Previously Activision also announced that they will release Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War on both of the consoles. However, we can clearly see from in-game footage as well as comments that both consoles will differ in terms of visuals. Unfortunately, we can not say the same for Horizon as we do not have more details at the time. Here is the tweet about its release.
Horizon: Forbidden West will also ship for PlayStation 4 as well as PlayStation 5. pic.twitter.com/rvwexN10Bn
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) September 16, 2020
Why The Support:
Now to justify this decision we must understand that Ps4 was a big success for Sony. Sony sold about 100 units to date which is a big number. Now cutting off all these users will not be a good decision. Besides Sony already announced that they will provide support for PS4 for the next three to four years. Sony kept support for some of the main titles this time around mainly because of this reason.
Sony said that in this way as they transition into the next generation with the PS5 they will still be able to keep PS4 engaged. Furthermore, we have already seen the performance of the new games on PS5. This means that the users who just want to wait for newer consoles can still buy the game and enjoy it.
However, for those who want to enjoy the full next-generation performance and features can spend their money on the new console to do so. There is however another argument here that the continuous support older hardware will limit developers in adding new features in games that rely on upgraded hardware.
This on the other hand in no way means that newer consoles will have a limited performance on games because of backward compatibility. We have seen developers make separate versions for both consoles. The PS4 version is obviously a little cut-down to get it running. Let’s hope that is the case for Horizon: Forbidden West as well. Hopefully, we will get to see the complete implementation of PS5’s features in the game.
That is it for the news on this new console. Stay tuned for more news and benchmarks one the consoles hit the shelves.