Sony apparently plans to bridge the console generation gap in a somewhat different way with the release of the PS5. It's spoken about the possibility of PS4 and PS5 playing together via backward compatibility once the new system is released, but Sony has no plans to leave the nearly 100 million PS4 owners in the past just yet. Given how much recent attention has been given to PS5 and the fact that Sony won't be at E3, you might wonder what's going with its first-party games slated for PS4. Are games like Death Stranding and The Last of Us II still coming to PS4? Sony has reaffirmed that these exclusives are indeed still headed to the current-gen platform.
"For the next three years or so, PS4 will be the engine of SIE's engagement and probability, as we seek to keep the existing owner base engaged and delighted and attract new owners from different markets and different demographics," SIE CEO and president Jim Ryan said during a Sony Investor Relations Day 2019 presentation (via IGN). "In this we will be massively helped by an outstanding roster of new and exclusive games that have yet to be launched."
Ryan was speaking over a slide at the investor meeting, which featured a graphic (pictured above) with one tile that read "Outstanding roster of exclusive AAA games still to come," followed by thumbnails of three upcoming PS4 games: The Last of Us Part II, Death Stranding, and Ghost of Tsushima.
This doesn't rule out the possibility that these games are also released on PS5, but Ryan and the rest of Sony are not ready to cut off the flow of PS4 games just yet.
We recently saw footage of the PS5's insanely-fast load times, thanks in large part to the system's newly-equipped solid-state drives. Despite some of the impressive power packed into the system, PlayStation 4 lead architect Mark Cerny told Wired writer Peter Rubin that the PS5 will have an "appealing" price point: "I believe that we will be able to release it at an SRP [suggested retail price] that will be appealing to gamers in light of its advanced feature set."