You don't respond to facts and reasoning?

Two ways I can see this and I'm sort of in the middle:

- The first few years of a new gen, all AAA games should be cross-gen because how else can they make money/recoup when the install base is much less, while last gen has +100M userbase
or..
- AAA games should remain new gen exclusive because if it's so good and with less games out, then the majority of new console owners will pick that up and it'll sell like hot cakes.

"- A lot of MS's games are either still going to be coming to Xbox One or are a year and half out, so why are cross gen games bad for Sony, but not an issue for MS?"
I have to wait about a week or so to answer this question.  June 13 is when Microsoft has their E3 presentation.  Sony has left themselves vulnerable.  Microsoft may take advantage of this opportunity or they may not.  We'll see.

"- On the whole, Vita isn't relevant.  Sony was convinced handhelds weren't relevant, and they basically ensured it failed. And market dynamics are very different between the console and portable, you even admit that Japan has more of a preference for one over the other."
Whenever someone thinks the Playstation brand is valuable, then the Vita becomes relevant.  The Vita tells us exactly how much the Playstation brand is worth.  The Wii U tells us exactly how much the Nintendo brand is worth.  That is how much a crappy system can sell just by putting the brand name on the console.  It's the games that have the real value and not the name on the box.

"-Vita also isn't the same scenario. The Vita got very little support, first or third party. It wasn't just an issue it didn't have exclusive games. It didn't get any of the mountain of multiplats that the PS5 will get, let alone exclusives like Ratchet and Clank, Final Fantasy XVI, and all the others."
Wikipedia says PS Vita got 1299 games.  That is a decent amount of support.  The N64 only got 393 games and sold about twice the hardware of the Vita.  Most N64 games were exclusive though.  Very few Vita games were.  Exclusives matter.  Making Rachet and Clank a PS5 exclusive is a smart move.  Making their other first party games cross-gen is a dumb move (Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon, etc...).

"- PS5 is going to be selling for the forseeable future, regardless of exclusives. There is a lot of demand for consoles, despite a lack of exclusives on PS5/XSX both, and it's not likely to catch up until next year or possibly the year after. At which point, both console makers have said that's when to expect more exclusives."
-This is wishful thinking.  Software is what sells hardware.  Hardware doesn't sell by magic.  It is true that when a system first releases it will sell for a few months to the most hardcore fans.  Even the Wii U sold pretty well at first.  This only lasts for so long though.  Most gamers actually want new games to play.  PS5 cannot be successful by resting on its laurels.  Console makers never get a free ride.

On top of that Sony is basically wasting it's first two years by releasing cross-gen titles.  Even if we find out that Microsoft is doing the same dumb thing, they could actually widen their lead over Microsoft.  Instead, it is Sony that is being dumb.  They are releasing all of these cross-gen titles and making themselves vulnerable to Microsoft.  Who knows, maybe we'll find out on June 13, that they'll be dumb together?  Or maybe Microsoft will have some killer reveals that will sell hardware over the next year or two.  Sony is definitely giving Microsoft a great opportunity. 

There's a third way that is already proving to work to get people to upgrade

- Next-gen enhancements / extras / exclusive features for coss-gen first party games

Apparently BC enhancements are already enough to keep the consoles selling out. So why wouldn't enhancements on first party games work the same? They can do it much better even since it's not BC, they can be tailored to take more advantage of the SSD, dual sense, RT and faster CPU. There is no parity clause at work here.

Forza Horizon 2 did the same yet that took two studios since the architecture was quite different. This gen it's much easier downscale to PS4 and add more features for PS5. GT7 could have dynamic weather on PS5, static on PS4. More cars on track on PS5, more limited on PS4 etc. It doesn't just have to be 4K vs 1080p. God of War can cut out the loading corridors for PS5 / speed up the loading elevators. Perhaps add exclusive valkyri fights or equivalent that can't be pulled off on ps4. Both can make full use of the dual sense. Just because its cross-gen doesn't mean the ps5 version will just be the ps4 version running at 4K60 or 4K120.

Those that don't really care about the shiniest, fastest, most complete version, ie are happy just to play the game, or also not the ones that upgrade early. They bought ps4 late and still have plenty to play on that. Better to entice them to buy God of War early, instead of buying it for cheap when they're ready to get a ps5 in 3 years or later. Plus since it's out early (in the gen), the more people on ps4 play it, the more will be looking forward to the next one which will be exclusive to ps5 and use all its capabilities.

The only reason to keep 1st party exclusive to next gen from day one is to drive up next gen console sales. Since it seems impossible to satisfy demand for the time being, that reason is null and void. And those who care about the shiniest will want to play the shiniest version anyway.

There should be a IDGAF option in the poll :P

If we're asking the same question after a few years this would be eyebrow raising. Though, we should just wait and see the games first, E3 is right around the corner.

Depends on how the vision of the game correlates with the limits of the hardware and how much demand is still there for each individual game.

IT's a transitionary period. the console isn't even past its 1-year mark. Hell, it's not even at 7 months yet and we already will have Returnal and Ratchet & Clank, not to mention a tonne of other cross generational games.

Some PS4 games are getting PS5 patches for better performance.
Some PS4 games are getting PS5 upgrades and native PS5 versions.
Some games are Cross-Generational between PS4 and Ps5
Some games are PS5 exclusive
Some games are coming out or are already out on PC
Most games are multiplatform and multigenerational.

It's almost like no one answer is right. IT's almost like, and hear me out on this one, diversity and versatility is good for the audience. No balance of exclusives vs cross gen will please everyone, which is why they're trying to appeal to as wide a demographic as realistically possible. No matter what happens there will be people bitching if games AREN'T cross gen, and others bitching if there are only exclusives. Some bitch about games being multiplatform, others bitch about games being exclusive. Some beg for PC ports and others claim they're bad for business.

The reality - and this goes for all game devs and hardware manufacturers and companies in general - is that we don't possibly have all the answers to know what actually is or is not good for the companies in question or their bottom line. All we have is our own interpretations of the data and actions of the company. Some people on this forum think that ALL multi-gen games are bad or stupid or bad business, but really only Sony can possibly know if it's good for their bottom line or not. Some people can CLAIM that not making new games strictly PS5 exclusive is going to hurt the business, but nothing in what we've seen so far indicates that at all.

You can't make absolute statements about what is or is not when we do not have all the data to confirm or deny it. All we can go by is what we have access to, and by all metrics Sony is doing a bang-up job appealing to the widest audience possible given the circumstances. You can claim that they are failing all you want, but reality doesn't really support that claim. Like, at all. Like, it feels like some people are standing in the middle of a torrential downpour saying the sky is clear, here.

I put sometimes, but generally not.

There is certainly some truth to a cross-gen game holding the new system back. It can also sometimes push an old console too far to its limits and result in frame drops, a loud fan, or other issues.

Sackboy made enough sense to be cross-gen. I kind of get Spider-Man: Miles Morales being cross-gen as well. I don't think Gran Turismo and God of War make sense. These titles historically lean heavily on the specs of the platform they are on. Horizon: Forbidden West should probably also be PS5-only as well.

At the very least, I hope Sony isn't mandating developers to do this. But they can't be for every title, as Ratchet and Clank is only on PS5.

It's almost like none of you are even remotely familair with PC development or something. That's all consoles are at this point, specialized PCs. Altering stuff like framerate and load times and resolution and ray tracing and all that jazz...isn't as hard as some of you are making it out to sound.

PC gamers are regularly some of the most insufferable, 'master race' style douchebags I've ever met in gaming, but they're absolutely right that PC games have by far the most versatile settings and features and regularly the best performance on the market. Everyone knows that a good PC can handle gaming better than any console...so why do so many people seem to think that developing a game like Horizon II The Forbidden West on both PS4 and PS5 is in some way going to lessen the game's performance or presentation on PS5?

Hypothetically, sure. Devoid of any context or nuance to the argument I could see being concerned that cross-generational development could hinder the better console, but in practice it's not as impacting as so many of you seem to think. and if it is, and if it does, and if it is far harder to handle given those circumstances, Well you better get your debate club shoes ready because you got an entire PC master race to try and argue with. Are PCs and consoles the same? Are their development cycles identical? Hell no, but they're close enough that you can't apply logic to one without it at least tangentially applying to the other. This isn't apples to oranges, it's nectarines to oranges. They're more similar than most people realize and the PS and Xbox Line both have gotten a tonne of love in generations 8 and 9 for how easy they are to develop for. You can't have it both ways.

Point is, you can't have an entire community extolling the virtues of PC gaming with its performance and scalability and versatility, then turn around and act like consoles can't have similar performance boosts or well-curated features. It's irrational and it's hypocritical and I can't take anyone seriously who honestly believes that games like God of War or Horizon are going to be bad or not beautiful because they are 'hampered' by the last generation hardware. These limitations are imagined, these performance issues are fiction. The reasoning behind it all makes sense in theory but no in practice or reality.

So I repeat: No one answer is right here. It doesn't matter what we think about what is good or not, how we percieve the pros and cons from a business perspective. We can say we only want games to either be or not be cross-generational, we can have opinions on the matter, but none of us are educated enough on the nuance of the situation to make a judgement on whether one side of the coin or the other is better. all I know is that Sony has been killing it, and when the only real complaint anyone has had about the company's output has been 'why can't I find a console anywhere', I don't really think they're doing poorly.

When your console is the fastest selling consle in the history of the medium and there are memes about how hard it is to get one, there's not a lot of room to improve there.

And my opinion on the matter is that I want people to be able to enjoy as many games as they can, but I also want Sony to do well because it means more people will get access to more great games. If balancing exclusives and cross-generation titles helps to make that a reality for the next 1-3 years, then so be it. I'm not missing out on any gaming experiences because Miles Morales and Forbidden West and Ragnarok are also on PS4, and I think it's also good to have games like Ratchet & Clank, Returnal, and Demon's Souls exclusive for the sake of incentivizing people to get new consoles if they wanna play them.

And you know what? if any of these exclusives get previous-generation ports to appease those who can't get PS5s or Series Xs, I'm okay with that, too.

I guess what people expected was to see all exclusive to be like the Unreal tech demo and Ratchet and Clank's instant teleportation or whatever you want to call it, as well as the super travel speed demonstrated in Spiderman. Things that change the gameplay and are not possible with a HDD. Stuff you don't see on PC since those still need to cater to lower I/O speeds.

However it takes time to think up interesting ways to use the faster I/O speed, and PCs can technically get around it by using a lot of RAM and preload everything. The older consoles are stuck with HDD, limited RAM and slow CPUs. You can make the graphics fancier, the frame rate and render resolution higher, add more effects, ray tracing, but you can't make use of direct streaming from SSD for new kinds of gameplay.

So if Horizon Forbidden West had a very fast flying mount, it can't be done on PS4. Heck I can't fly very fast in FS2020 over PG Areas as I simply run out of terrain, my cpu isn't fast enough to keep up. The difference with PC is, fix it yourself, get better hardware. On consoles, your game gets taken off psn ;)

But I fully agree that not all games need to be changed asap to make full use of the new features. Let devs play with the new tech for a while to make worthwhile game play enhancements instead of shoehorning fast flying / teleportation into everything.