Yesterday Sony hosted a special presentation, in which viewers were given information about upcoming games, as well as the release date and official price of the highly anticipated PlayStation 5. An interview with the company's CEO has dug deeper into some of the details revealed during the presentation.
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, PlayStation Chief Operatin Officer Jim Ryan talked a little bit more about the PlayStation 5 and the fact that some of the games that had been previously announced — like Horizon Forbidden West and MARVEL's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, for instance — aren't really exclusives.
"No one should be disappointed. The PlayStation 5 versions of those games are built from the ground up to take advantage of the PlayStation 5 feature set, and we have an upgrade path for PlayStation 4 users to get the PlayStation 5 versions for free. It's about people having choice. I'm really quite pleased about the situation," Ryan explained in regards to some games not being exclusives as initially believed.
This is definitely reassuring, considering that these are not games made for the PlayStation 4, so they will technically be PlayStation 5 games that have been ported to Sony's current-gen console. What's more, free upgrades will still make up for games launching on both generation of consoles; everybody wins.
In regards to the games that are currently available on the PlayStation 4, Ryan also has some uplifting news to share; revealng that of the massive library of titles tested for forwards compatibility, a massive "99 percent" can be played on the PlayStation 5.
While Ryan doesn't specify, it is likely that he means physical media — since it would be up to outside developers to upload their games to the new console's PlayStation Store.
Much like they did with the PlayStation 3 when the PlayStation 4 launched, Sony's approach to the current-gen console is expected to continue for, at the very least, three to four years into the PlayStation 5's life.
"The PlayStation 4 community will continue to be incredibly important to us for three or four years. Many will transition to PlayStation 5, we hope if we do our job well, but tens of millions will still be engaged with the PlayStation 4," Ryan reveals.
On top of this, Sony also announced yesterday the PlayStation Plus Collection — that will give PlayStation 5 owners a grand total of 18 PlayStation 4 games to choose from at launch — which already boosts the next-gen console's appeal for both newcomers and PlayStation 4 owners who have yet to try some of these critically acclaimed, and generation-defining titles.
PlayStation Plus isn't exclusively offering titles developed by some of Sony's first-party developers, as there are also other titles by third-party devs that made the cut. Again, giving players a pretty sizeable selection of video games to choose from on launch day.
PlayStation 5 is expected to launch on Thursday the 12th of November in the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea; worldwide release on Thursday the 19th of November.