The long queue of PlayStation 4 is amazing. The console still has 49 million active users according to Sony’s latest estimate. But all good things must come to an end, and it’s clearer than ever that Sony is ready to leave the PS5’s predecessor in the past, with Horizon Lego Adventures like the final nail in the coffin.
That growing sense of a good way it’s not exactly new. The last major cross-gen exclusive released by Sony was God of War Ragnarok at the end of 2022. The following year Spiderman 2 launched without a PS4 version. Burning shoresthe 2023 expansion for cross-gen Horizon Forbidden West, was also a “next generation” exclusive. “The PlayStation 4 generation is well and truly over!” a viral tweet from last summer read. “Crossgen is over!”
Despite the allusion to this development will be phased out by 2025, Sony has never officially confirmed that it has stopped making PS4 games. The final word on the subject came from newly elected PlayStation co-CEO Hermen Hulst in 2022. “We certainly don’t want to forget the millions of active PS4 players and we want to make sure there are great games for them as well,” then-head of PlayStation Studios said Axios at this time. “We evaluate it on a case-by-case basis.”
There was reason to believe that one or two first-party projects might still affect older hardware. In addition to using the Nintendo Switch due to licensing requirements, The MLB Show 24 it also still came to PS4 and Xbox One. Then Sony revealed Horizon Lego Adventures at Summer Game Fest, a kid-friendly co-op game ostensibly aimed at broadening the appeal of the sci-fi series.
To that end, it’s coming to Switch in addition to PS5 when it launches later this year, but strangely not to PS4. This seems more like a deliberate business decision than a technical necessity. The older system can clearly handle the benchmarks set by Nintendo’s aging handheld hybrid, and is no doubt active in millions of households with kids who haven’t yet upgraded to the PS5 and perhaps still won’t as of this year Call of Duty, Maddenand EA FC Sports (also known as FIFA) will all be available on last generation machines.
But 2024 was full of PlayStation exclusives, and almost all of them missed out on the PS4. Earlier this year they were included Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Helldivers 2, Star Bladeand Rise of Roninthe last three of which were published by Sony. Granblue Fantasy: Relink was the only exception, possibly because its development was originally announced in 2016.
Most recently, Sony revealed its upcoming live-action character shooter Concord will also be exclusive to the PS5 console. It may have been technically infeasible to bring Overwatch 2 a competitor to a weaker system, but there would certainly have been interest in targeting it to the largest possible audience of potential PS Plus subscribers. Astro Bot skipping PS4 also doesn’t seem like a foregone conclusion given the more Nintendo-like scope of the project, though it’s easier to understand once you see how integrated the PS5 DualSense is into the fabric of what makes gaming fun and engaging.
Although unfortunately for PS4 owners, it wouldn’t be surprising if Sony really quietly decided to turn the page on one of the best console generations of all time. If anything, it’s more shocking that the intergenerational party has lasted as long as it has. We’re already in the second half of the PS5’s life cycle, and platforms traditionally abandon development of older console generations much earlier in an attempt to get more people to upgrade sooner. Covid apparently disrupted the “normal” transition periods for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. And perhaps increasing the budgets of first countries has also worked. God of War Ragnarok it wouldn’t set a sales record if it was just new hardware.
It’s unclear whether Horizon Lego Adventures and Astro Bot are proof that Sony will start rebuilding the smaller, cheaper part of its first-party portfolio. If so, there might still be hope for one last PS4 first-party game. I kind of doubt it.
Sony did not respond to a request for comment.
