It looks like Gran Turismo 7 won’t be exclusive to the PS5 after all, as PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst confirmed Sony is looking at bringing the racing sim and other upcoming titles to PS4 as well as current gen hardware.
Writing in a Q&A posted on the official PlayStation blog, Hulst stated: “You can’t build a community of over 110 million PS4 owners and then just walk away from it, right? I think that’d be bad news for fans of PS4, and frankly not very good business…
“Where it makes sense to develop a title for both PS4 and PS5 – for Horizon Forbidden West, the next God of War, GT7 – we’ll continue looking at that. And if PS4 owners want to play that game, then they can. If they want to go on and play the PS5 version, that game will be there for them.”
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As Hulst wrote, Gran Turismo 7 is the latest in a string of first party titles gracing last generation consoles as well as the current, after both Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok were confirmed to also be hitting the PS4.
Last gen lamentations
If Gran Turismo 7 is destined to release on PS4, then, it would mark the first time in the history of this legacy series that one of its titles has been released across multiple generations.
Gran Turismo as a series has always been a showcase of how hard developer Polyphony Digital can push the power of the hardware it’s working with. It might not get the same chance with Gran Turismo 7 if the developer has to account for the technological gap between PS4 and PS5.
Hulst’s reasoning, in fairness, isn’t off the mark. PS4 still has a monolithic install base, so releasing Gran Turismo 7 on the last gen machine will net Sony a significant chunk of revenue. Especially so considering that component shortages affecting PS5 supply could persist well into 2022, meaning a PS4 release should help keep sales numbers strong.
It’s easy to be critical of PlayStation Studios’ decision to release its flagship titles on aging hardware, because there’s an argument to be made that the last generation PS4 will effectively limit the potential of the same games’ current gen PS5 versions.
That’s not to say Gran Turismo 7 won’t look spectacular. Horizon Forbidden West still looked stunning running on PS5 during its State of Play gameplay presentation, for example. But it’s now much harder to envision Gran Turismo 7 being a true showcase of the PS5’s power in the same way that the upcoming Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart likely will be.
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