A recent interview with PlayStation boss Hermen Hulst has reignited the heated debate about crossgen gaming, as he admitted the majority of Sony’s upcoming slate, including Horizon Forbidden West, God of War, and Gran Turismo 7 will also be on the PS4. A pretty significant change in messaging for a company that once proudly stated “we believe in console generations.” Of those games, Gran Turismo 7 is perhaps the most galling, as Sony specifically declared it was a PS5 exclusive in the past.
What on earth gave people the impression GT7 was exclusive to PS5? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/pv6sC8whcR
— Adam Fairclough (@EvilBoris) June 2, 2021
What happened? Was Sony just toying with us? Apparently not – according to Video Games Chronicle’s Andy Robinson, who has delivered plenty of accurate insider info in the past, the decision to make Gran Turismo 7 a crossgen game was only made relatively recently…
Gran Turismo 7, after all, was outright advertised as a PS5 exclusive in December, although to be fair to Sony, I understand the decision to release a PS4 version was made only fairly recently. For Horizon Forbidden West and God of War, however, these games were always intended to release as cross-gen titles, I was told, but Sony did not mention the last-gen console during the announcement of either title.
So, technically, Sony wasn’t lying when they previously said Gran Turismo 7 was PS5 exclusive. It probably was at the time. Sony may be absolved in that respect, but if this rumor is legit, it’s also true that even after widespread fan backlash against crossgen games, they went back and retroactively made the developers of Gran Turismo 7 work on a PS4 version. Not the most fan or developer-friendly decision. This also raises a lot of questions – will Polyphony Digital be scaling back their vision for GT7 so that the PS5 and PS4 can be on par? Or will the PS5 version be able to breathe on its own with some exclusive features, since it began development first? We shall see.
Gran Turismo 7 is coming to PS4 and PS5 sometime 2022. What are your thoughts on this? Has GT7 being crossgen blunted your excitement a bit?
