Why Sony’s cross-gen strategy makes perfect sense

Sony Interactive Entertainment has come under fire after the company announced that God of War: Ragnarok and Gran Turismo 7 would be cross-generational titles. Fans of the PlayStation 5 feel that releasing these games for the now 7 year old PS4 would be detrimental to the quality. Especially since the PS5 has relatively few exclusives at this time that really show off its hardware capabilities. While the news has certainly rustled a lot of jimmies among the fanboys, this move, however, makes perfect sense from Sony’s perspective.

The PS5 has sold about 8.5 million units worldwide. Which is pretty respectable given the circumstances. Due to an ongoing chip shortage, next gen hardware continues to be near impossible to find. At least not for anything close to retail prices. This issue is having significant ripple effects across the entire video game industry, impacting every platform, not just PlayStation.

So here’s the problem. Blockbuster tent pole franchises like God of War and Gran Turismo exist to sell more hardware, so platform holders can sell more games. But, if nobody can buy the hardware, well, that’s a dilly of a pickle. Especially considering these games make the vast majority of their sales within the first two weeks post-launch. Now, not every PS5 owner is going to be interested in those two games. However, a lot of PlayStation 4 owners will be. People who can’t upgrade to next gen hardware, or at least would have a very hard time doing so. With 115 million consoles out in the wild, that’s a lot of money to be left on the table if these games were left as next gen exclusives.

Now, it is worth noting that big spectacle games take years to develop. Both Polyphony and Santa Monica likely intended to support the PS4 from the start. It’s easier to start with weaker hardware and scale games up from there, than doing the opposite. Just look at the many “impossible ports” on the Switch. So while it’s not trivial to add in next gen exclusive features like ray tracing, it can and likely will be done for the PS5 versions. So it’s not like PS5 owners are going to end up with an inferior copy of the game. In fact, Microsoft is already doing this by committing to at least another two years of support for the Xbox One. Thanks to their “Smart Delivery” strategy, you can buy a game on the One but still get free access to the Series X version once you’re able. So it’s not as if what Sony is doing is unprecedented. Now whether Sony will offer free upgrades to the PS5 versions if the game is bought for the PS4 remains to be seen. However, given that these are first party titles, they’d be stupid not to.

As the chip, and thus console shortage drags on, likely well into 2022 by this point, expect more games to get cross-gen announcements.