One of PlayStation's biggest games is dropping PS4 support

PlayStation 4 is losing one of the most popular free-to-play games in April 2026, possibly indicating an eventual forced migration from the platform.

2

MiHoYo has confirmed plans to end PS4 support for billion-dollar F2P giant Genshin Impact. The game will be pulled from PS4 in three phases: delisting the game (September 10, 2025), shutting down microtransactions (February 25, 2026), and pulling servers offline (April 8, 2026). After this, Genshin Impact will only be playable via PlayStation 5.

The free-to-play game has had a tremendous impact on PlayStation's service revenues. Genshin Impact was among the 10 games that generated over $10 billion in revenue on the PlayStation Store. To put it another way: These 10 games/franchises made up over half of annual PlayStation Store earnings every year for the past 5 years in a row.

The move comes at an interesting time when Sony has pledged support for the PlayStation 4.

PlayStation executives had previously said that the company would carry the PS4 well into the future:

"...We've reduced traditional cyclicality by establishing a large ecosystem of players across both the PS5 and PS4 generations, which provides recurring revenues.

"This has driven an overall high and stable level of spend on content and services, which by the way now constitutes 2/3rds of our revenue, providing a consistent, predictable, and profitable base of our revenue.

"But our PS4 players are still active and spending as well.

"So by providing players with increasing options of how to access the platform, we're able to better target different play patterns and monetization profiles of different customer segments.

"As we continue to drive multi-generational ecosystem into the future, we'll provide new ways for players to access the platform and experience our content and services."