The PS4 generation isn’t over quite yet — but it’s finally getting close

In 2016, Activision made what appeared like a fairly smart announcement. That yr’s Name of Obligation, a futuristic off-shoot referred to as Infinite Warfare, would solely be launched for PC and current-gen consoles. That meant the so-called Gen 8 consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The PS3 and Xbox 360 had been getting left behind.

The Gen 8 consoles had been launched again in 2013, and there had already been three annual Name of Obligation video games launched since then that had variations made for each the PS3-era gadgets and the PS4 ones.

By 2015, the Gen 7 model of Name of Obligation didn’t even embrace the next-gen-only marketing campaign mode.

For Activision’s high franchise, the interval of overlapping console generations had run for 3 years and was drawing to an in depth. A few yr later, it will finish for different huge annual sequence, too.

If that appears completely different from what’s been taking place this console technology for the final half-decade, nicely, it’s.

Name of Obligation had three years of overlapping generational assist final time. For this console transition, it’s had extra. Final yr’s Name of Obligation: Black Ops 6 was the fifth consecutive annual Name of Obligation recreation launched on present gen consoles (Gen 9: PS5, Xbox Sequence) and the prior gen.

Different annual sequence have additionally prolonged their prior-gen assist longer this time than they did beforehand.

It’s been a slower, extra prolonged console transition, as most of the business’s largest firms have been loath to desert the earlier technology.

It is smart, to an extent. There have been 10s of thousands and thousands house owners of Gen 8 consoles and never all of them have upgraded to newer items.

Don’t neglect the final gen

Final spring, Sony president Hiroki Totoki mentioned that there have been 118 million month-to-month lively customers throughout PlayStation platforms and that “about half of the persons are enjoying on PS4.”

This was stunning, if solely due to how little older-gen consoles are mentioned by recreation firms and video games media as soon as new items launch. Folks enjoying PS4 in 2023 and 2024? Certain! It occurred rather a lot. Simply didn’t get a number of press.

The PS5 had offered 59 million items by spring 2024, which was not a small quantity. However Sony nonetheless had an equally large quantity of gamers — round 50 million — fortunately gaming on the gadget that preceded it. (Prompted by these stats, final yr I collected replies from round 300 individuals who informed me why they’d held off on getting a new-gen console. The commonest reply: no must-have video games to justify the value.)

It actually made sense that, in 2024, Sony would nonetheless promote a baseball online game to them that they might play.

If something, it’s notable that in 2025, Sony is lastly exhibiting a transparent want to stop PS4 assist. Its first get together video games have been transferring that manner. Insomniac’s Spider-Man franchise ditched PS4 for the Spider-Man 2 recreation in 2023. The ill-fated Harmony final yr was PS5-only.

And Sony is now, proper on schedule, transferring its subscription plan’s advantages away from the prior technology.

This week Sony additionally mentioned it plans to cease often providing month-to-month PS4 video games to PlayStation Plus subscribers, beginning in January 2026. Meaning the PS4 profit for PS Plus could have lasted simply over 60 months because the launch of PS5. That’s nearly precisely so long as the PS3 profit for PS Plus lasted into the PS4 period.

Sony’s messaging concerning the PS Plus change this week famous that “lots of our gamers are at the moment enjoying on PS5 and have shifted towards redeeming and accessing PS5 titles.”

The curious case of NBA 2K

It’s unclear how profitable the extension of assist for the prior technology of consoles has been, both for gamers or game-makers.

No huge recreation writer breaks down the gross sales for its cross-gen video games by console technology, so it’s arduous to know the way standard, say, the PS4 model of MLB The Present 24 was in comparison with the PS5 version.

However there may be one recreation sequence, NBA 2K, the place the wager on longer old-gen assist doesn’t appear to have performed out as deliberate. That scenario illustrates what a bizarre console transition this has been.

In August of final yr, NBA 2K mum or dad firm Take Two reported lower-than-expected revenues from its cross-gen NBA 2K sequence, and executives wound up fielding a query from a monetary analyst who urged that Gen 8 consoles (PS4, Xbox One) had been had been proving overly “sticky” and that players weren’t shopping for newer, costlier variations of the sport.

“No, I don’t assume what shoppers are saying is they’re good with Gen 8 and don’t care about Gen 9,” Take Two chairman Strauss Zelnick mentioned in response.

“We noticed the precise opposite with regard to NBA 2K, the place Gen 8 really was not a excessive performer and carried out worse than we anticipated.”

The cross-gen wager hadn’t paid off, in different phrases.

Three months later, Take Two president Karl Slatoff fielded an analyst query about seemingly flat gross sales for September’s NBA 2K25 (launched for Gen 8 and Gen 9) in comparison with the prior yr’s editions.

Once more, the reply confirmed that Gen 8 had fallen off, problematically so.

“We nonetheless are coping with the dynamic of: the Gen 9 console enterprise is actually rising, however…not on the identical charge because the Gen 8 is declining,” Slatoff mentioned.

He added: “We clearly anticipate that that’s going to reverse at one level sooner or later, as Gen 9 continues to take a foothold and folks have an increasing number of causes to maneuver from Gen 8 to Gen 9.”

(Observe: One of many largest motivators for Gen 8 players to lastly purchase a Gen 9 console is slated to be launched by Slatoff’s firm later this yr. And one other notice relating to any muted uptake for Gen 9: Consoles simply haven’t dropped their costs this technology. By now, they usually would have.)

So, was all this prolonged assist for Xbox One and PS4 editions of video games this far into the present console technology a mistake?

Within the U.S., a minimum of, assist for video games on Gen 8 consoles final yr doesn’t seem to have been profitable. “It was commonplace for 2024 new releases with PS4 and/or XBO variations to see lower than 10% of general gross sales quantity of that title coming from these variations, in some instances considerably much less,” Mat Piscatella, a Circana analyst who tracks the U.S. gaming market, informed me.

For some players, the prolonged cross-gen assist this time round has been a irritating drag on the technical progress they anticipate from the medium. Every time a brand new PS5 recreation additionally needed to have a PS4 model, they reasoned, it couldn’t have used the PS5’s capabilities to the fullest.

That could be, however the economics of recent gaming are additionally exhibiting that video games that push console {hardware} aren’t essentially value the price of growth.

The query of whether or not players are transferring on to the subsequent {hardware} nowadays can simply morph into questions on whether or not recreation builders ought to or, extra essentially, even whether or not a brand new console technology is required.

“Each 7 or 8 years the platforms spend billions in R&D,” Matthew Ball, an entrepreneur and occasional analyst who simply wrote a provocative State of Video Gaming in 2025 report, informed me. “Then they spend billions in content material growth to re-platform in any other case pleased prospects whereas giving publishers a possibility to raise their recreation. And it’s not resulting in extra gamers. It’s not promoting extra items and it’s not promoting extra consoles and it’s turning into brutally costly.”

Ball doesn’t advocate for an finish to new consoles, however we had a blunt dialogue about whether or not it’s clever for recreation makers to nonetheless pursue the highest-end graphics individuals affiliate with a next-gen improve, when players are sending so many alerts that they don’t prioritize them.

Video games that don’t require innovative {hardware} — corresponding to Fortnite, Roblox and Grand Theft Auto V — nonetheless high console exercise charts, Ball famous.

Nintendo simply outshined Sony and Microsoft for the previous eight years with a console that launched with much less horsepower than the PS4 and Xbox One.

Over on Roblox, one of many planet’s hottest gaming platforms, video games with superior graphics are potential and a few even do pretty nicely, however the most well-liked experiences are nonetheless visually primitive and don’t precisely tax superior gaming {hardware}. Talking of supporting older {hardware}, Roblox is appropriate again to 2013’s iPhone 5S, although many experiences reportedly don’t run very nicely on gadgets older than 2016’s iPhone 7.

The underside line: Older gadgets can nonetheless run the video games individuals most wish to play.

So, goodbye PS4 (and Xbox One). However, hey Sony and Microsoft, possibly take your time with PS6 and the subsequent Xbox.