Is the era of the PlayStation 4 drawing to a close? For Sony's first party developers that seems to be the case – according to a new analyst report, they're all now turning their attentions to producing PS5 games.
Daniel Ahmad, analyst with Niko Partners, says Sony's in-house development teams are downing tools on PS4 titles in order to get to grips with, and produce titles using, the new PlayStation 5 development kits.
“PS5 dev kits are out there and I’ve heard positive things about it," stated Ahmad in a post to ResetEra, before tempering expectations of any official announcement with," [...] But I wouldn’t expect any information in the immediate future.”
Cross generation titles?
Thanks to the locked-in slate of games, Ahmed is confident of another great year for PS4 gaming regardless of the shift in focus to PS5. In a separate post he continued:
“2019 will be another solid year for the [PS4] platform due to the large install base, growing network sales, strong third party software, first party software and back catalog.
"Lineup for the first half of the year is set but second half is still in flux. Sony also has a couple of unannounced games (already existing IP) with PS4 in mind but I’m conscious that there have been discussions around making them cross gen/next gen titles.
"In general, most of the focus for Sony [first party] is on PS5 right now. It is still early to talk about next gen but I imagine we’ll hear some whispers come out of GDC.”
The talk of cross-generation titles seems like a sensible prediction, given the success of cross-gen titles on PS4 like Destiny, The Last of Us and Grand Theft Auto 5.
Could we see the likes of Death Stranding (which has been little more than teased at this point) become a cross-gen torch bearer for Sony? And the same for The Last of Us 2? Ambitious titles like Cyberpunk 2077 seem beyond the comfortable capabilities of the PS4 – so don't be surprised if they pop up on future machines, too.
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