PlayStation 5 won't be held back by PS4 hardware gen, Sony confirms

Sony confirms it won't force developers to make PS5 games run on older last-gen PS4 hardware.

Unlike Microsoft, who has mandated first-party studios can't make next-gen exclusives, Sony says some PS5 games won't be available on the PS4. Microsoft plans to merge the Xbox One and Xbox Series X generations together for a few years, but Sony wants to jump headlong into the new gen and make firm separations between the PS4 and PS5.

Sony will allow no-compromise next-gen performance. Devs can make PS5 exclusives that're built from the ground up for the higher-end 2.23GHz 10.3TFLOP Navi RDNA 2 GPU, 3.5GHz 8-core Zen 2 CPU, ultra-fast 5.5GB/sec PCIe 4.0 SSD, and 16GB of GDDR6 unified RAM.

Developers will be free to push the hardware to its limits and hit native 4K (and even 8K gaming), 120FPS frame rates, ray traced visuals, and smooth performance that's all streamed at 100x the data speeds of the PS4. In short, developers who make PS5 games won't be held back by cross-gen optimizations and stone-age Jaguar CPUs and slow HDDs.

The PlayStation 5 is backward compatible with thousands of PS4 games like an iterative console, but that's where the similarities end. It's a true leap forward in hardware, architecture, and games, and some titles simply can't run on the PS4's limited power.

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In a recent interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan confirmed the news:

"We have always said that we believe in generations. We believe that when you go to all the trouble of creating a next-gen console, that it should include features and benefits that the previous generation does not include.

"And that, in our view, people should make games that can make the most of those features.

"We do believe in generations, and whether it's the DualSense controller, whether it's the 3D audio, whether it's the multiple ways that the SSD can be used, we are thinking that it is time to give the PlayStation community something new, something different, that can really only be enjoyed on PS5."

Sony will demonstrate the first round of PlayStation 5 exclusives in a special event next Thursday on June, 4, 2020 at 4PM EST. The showcase will focus on next-gen exclusive PS5 launch games.