The PS5 is finally here around the world, and for those who managed to get one, they were primed and ready to jump into this new generation of consoles. Of course, as we’re finding out, we’re going to be in for lot of cross-generational development. Sony themselves have said to expect it in some form for the next 3 years, even though apparently cross-gen first party titles will be built from the ground up with PS5 features in mind. It’s really not that shocking, considering how the costs of games have gone up in recent years, and that the PS4 has a near 115 million userbase. In fact, Jim Ryan isn’t really expecting a big defining moment for the system for a bit.
Speaking with TASS, the PlayStation CEO talked about the cross-gen nature of the next few years. He again addressed how he didn’t see the PS4/PS5 cross-gen as an issue, and even said he thought it’d probably be at least 2022 before we started seeing generation-defining titles. Ryan even pointed back to the early years of the PS4 and says it followed a similar trajectory.
“History will tell you that it’s in the second or third year that the developers really hit their stride. Developers typically need a little bit of time to familiarize themselves [with the hardware]. But it’s probably 2022 that you’re going to see some wonderful things in the same way that it was 2015/2016 for the previous generation, when the generation defining-games started to be published.”
He’s probably being pretty realistic. Obviously, a lot of studios are going to be hesitant to abandon the big userbases that exist for the PS4/Xbox One, as we’ve seen from the very few offerings of PS5/XBox Series X/S-only titles for the current launch period. It’ll take awhile with that in mind before developers really start taking the full advantage of this new hardware. But hey, a lot of these cross-gen titles will be best on the new systems and tons of older games will be getting enhancements. That’s the life of the early adapter.