Despite touting its belief in console generations for much of 2020, Sony revealed at its PS5 showcase that several first-party games will remain cross-generational on PS4 and PS5. This list includes marquee titles such as this holiday's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Horizon: Forbidden West and Sackboy's Big Adventure. Others, such as Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, remain next-gen exclusives, but the change still took many by surprise and felt like an abrupt about-face after so much talk about a clear dividing line between PS4 and PS5.
The initial talks of the generational leap stood in contrast to the Xbox messaging which stressed that players could expect at least a year or two of cross-generational titles from Microsoft's 15 first-party studios, but that line was a bit blurred when the most recent Xbox show revealed several upcoming games that won't play on Xbox One, at least not natively - cloud gaming may be a solution down the line. Games such as Fable and State of Decay 3 were revealed with a noticeable lack of Xbox One mentions, and the brand later confirmed that was intentional.
This indicates these games exist outside the "year or two" or cross-gen support Xbox has promised before, and Sony's own backtracking today makes things even sillier. After all the talk about how Sony and Microsoft had different goals in mind for the next generation, it seems they will launch as the type of rivals they long have been to date.
We also learned that the PS5 will match the Xbox Series X in price - but only for one of its SKUs. The PS5, like the Series X, will retail for $499. The PS5 Digital Edition will come in $100 more expensive than the Xbox Series S, $399 compared to $299. The PS5 will also launch on November 12 in some regions, two days after the Xbox consoles, while it will then come to other regions on November 19. Those getting the PS5 early include markets in the US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea.
Pre-orders have so far been a mess, with Sony's own invite-only queue not taking place until tomorrow, September 18, and invites have so far seemed quite rare. Meanwhile, Sony made no mention of pre-orders at its showcase, but quickly after the show announced they would open up today...only for many retailers to actually open them yesterday. Messaging was confused in more ways than that too, with games such as Final Fantasy 16 and Demon's Souls showing PC gameplay but then not confirming PC launches, even though in the latter's case, the trailer explicitly said a PC version was coming.
It wasn't the clearest or best moment for the next-gen frontrunner, but a price-matched console - and really just a price at all - is the last bit of vital information most players were hoping for. Good luck in those pre-order searches!
