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Norion on 03 June 2021
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I've seen people across various places mention the PS4's big install base as a reason for this but that isn't a good argument since sales of these two games will be absolutely dwarfed by the PS5 versions. A lot of people have already moved on or are wanting to move on from the last gen consoles and by 2022 the amount of people willing to buy games on those consoles will be far smaller than the number on the new ones. It's similar to how people defended the late 3DS games due to the supposed bigger install base but in the end only some of the ones released in 2017 sold over a million and the ones released in 2018-2019 overall didn't do that well and at least a couple outright flopped. It's not as bad as that situation at least though since games aren't being made exclusive to the old consoles longer than they should be.

chakkra said:

Hynad said:

There. No reason to single them out as if they were the only one among the big 3 to be known for that. It’s a pretty much industry-spread thing, and they shouldn’t be called out over it if a free pass is given to the others, or you simply close your eyes when the others do it.

I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with games being cross-gen. I do not believe that games can be held back by weaker hardware aside from the graphics department nor do I believe that games will automatically be better, more creative, and more innovative just because devs have more power available. We have a whole history there to tell us that that has never been the case, I mean if having more power available did automatically make games "more creative and innovative" then the PS4/XOne library would be full of games better than the Switch one's, from a creative perspective.

With all that being said, the issue here is that Sony was the only one that was not upfront about this.

The degree to which games get held back by weaker hardware can be debated but it is a fact that they get held back. Super Mario 64 wouldn't have worked on the SNES, 3d console games in the 90's needed better hardware than the 16 bit systems offered. For a more modern case Breathe of the Wild wouldn't have worked on a system much weaker than the Switch or Wii U, its scope needed a certain level of power. You're right that more power doesn't automatically lead to better, more creative or innovative games but for devs who want to create games like that more power helps a ton.