Over four years into the current console generation, we’re still seeing game releases, like WWE 2K25 and Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, launching on the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S and the 12-year-olds PS4 and Xbox One. I’m not saying that gamers on old-gen don’t matter, but isn’t it time to let them be?
I wonder why publishers are still catering to optimizing games for decade-old hardware at the expense of making good-looking and better-playing games on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S.
Could it be that they aren’t ready yet to leverage the power of current-gen systems? Is it that PS4 sales are still too profitable? Well, not everyone is happy to spend top dollars on a console to play games that are just as fun on old-gen. I can’t help but feel this approach is completely holding back the industry’s potential.
Cross-Gen releases are fun, but we need to move forward
The “why” of game developers’ continued support for old-gen consoles might be right on our faces – Money! According to Statista, the PS4 has an install base of over 117 million units worldwide, while the Xbox One has sold an estimated 58 million (Xbox really struggled against Sony’s second-highest-selling game console)
In contrast, the November 2020-launched PS5 has sold around 72 million units, and the Xbox Series X|S is estimated at 29 million as of February 2025. This is the reality of the matter: there are still millions of gamers who haven’t upgraded to current-gen hardware, and ‘Business 101’ dictates where there’s demand, there must be supply.
In its first year, the PS5 shipped 17.3 million units, just 3 million behind its predecessor, the PlayStation 4, which sold 20.2 million units over a comparable timeframe.
Take a franchise like WWE 2K25 that will be released on Friday on both PS4 and PS5, as well as Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. The game has annual releases, and ignoring the old-gen audience would only mean leaving millions in revenue on the table.
We all get it; It’s a greedy and competitive market, but it’s us, the gamers, who are left in angst playing “half-baked” games that work well on old-gen yet very buggy on newer consoles.
There aren’t many reasons as to why any game needs a PS4 release. But I could argue that publishers are prioritizing sales and choosing to cater to the lowest common denominator, old-gen hardware, rather than pushing the boundaries of what current-gen consoles can do.
From a development perspective, supporting the old-gen is also less risky and more “cost-friendly.” All they have to do is make a base game on them, add a few unique and special animations, use upscaling to boost frame rates, port it to newer consoles, and be done.
Creating a game that uses up all the 10.28 teraflops of the PS5 or the 12 teraflops of the Xbox Series X requires heavy investments in new workflows, tools, and, most importantly, expertise.
It’s just easier to build a game for old hardware and then upscale it for current-gen systems rather than starting from scratch on the current hardware. And what does this result? Maybe better-looking games, but bang-average experiences.
We paid over $400 for consoles. Is ray tracing, 4K resolution at 120 fps, and a good storyline really too much to ask for?
The cost of cross-gen development
I do not specifically believe that cross-gen game development is a bad thing for the community, but my biggest frustration with it is how it limits the potential of current-gen consoles.
If you saw Kojima Producion’s Death Stranding 2’s trailer(Made 10 minutes look like 3 because of how cinematic it was), then you have an idea of how high these consoles can go when it comes to PS5-compatible game development engines.
When a game is designed to run on both old-gen and current-gen hardware, developers must work within the limitations of the older systems. This means they have to cut corners on features that could truly showcase the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, such as modern physics systems, expansive open worlds, or advanced AI.
Don’t take my word for it. Horizon Forbidden West, released in 2022 on both PS4 and PS5, is visually stunning on the latter, but its core design was constrained by the need to run on PS4.
The game’s world, while beautiful, doesn’t feature the kind of dynamic systems or scale that could have been possible if Guerrilla Games had focused solely on the PS5.
Why invest in a powerful console if the games I’m playing are upscaled versions of what runs on a decade-old machine? Sounds unfair to me.
Game releases are getting slower
The persistence of old-gen releases has created a noticeable drought in current-gen exclusive titles, particularly when compared to previous console transitions. During the PS4 and Xbox One era, the first few years saw a steady stream of exclusives that defined the generation, including titles like inFamous, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Bloodborne, The Crew, and Forza Horizon 2.
Yet, the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S libraries, four years in the making, feel a little underwhelming in terms of exclusives. Sony has delivered a few standouts, like Astro Bot and Demon’s Souls, but many of its major releases, such as God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West, were cross-gen.
Sony’s management really wasted half the gen chasing live-service games only to cancel nearly all of them. This is the reason why we aren’t getting more single-player games from them on PS5. pic.twitter.com/AtQx9L9uFv
Big Microsoft titles like Starfield and Forza Motorsport are available on Xbox One via cloud streaming. I know how valuable Game Pass is to the Xbox community, I can’t help but feel that Microsoft’s “play anywhere” philosophy has diluted the incentive to develop Xbox Series X|S exclusives.
Sure, we have lots to be excited about this year: Ghost of Yōtei, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Grand Theft Auto VI, and Marvel’s Wolverine, just to name a few. But when are those games launching? More and more waiting.
Why not focus on the current-gen only?
Why not just focus on current-gen consoles and let old-gen fade away? I mean, more exclusives lead to more console sales, right? The longer developers cater to old-gen hardware, the longer we’ll be stuck in the “transitional period,” and there will be no need to buy a PS6 or whatever Xbox comes next.
I hope we’re getting closer to times when new consoles are no longer treated as souped-up versions of their predecessors but as platforms that will have their own experiences.
The PS5 and Xbox Series X|S need more games, games that push the boundaries of what’s possible, not 30 FPS upscaled to 1440P or 4K quality.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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By Nermeen Nabil Khear 