Sony declares new PS4 games must work on PS5 from July onwards

Sony has declared that all new PS4 games that release after July must also be compatible with next-gen Playstation 5 hardware. 

Starting on July 13th, Sony will require all new PS4 games to be forward compatible with the new hardware. All of the work to do this will have to be done on the side of the developer, although Sony will be contacting developers on how to test PS5 compatibility for their games.

The news of Sony’s new declaration comes from Eurogamer after seeing the developer documentation on Sony’s internal partners website. From now on, new games must be checked for PlayStation 5 compatibility, an option that was added to the PlayStation 4 SDK at the end of last month.

PlayStation 5 compatible games will only be given the greenlight by Sony if the PS4 games run without issues on the next-gen console. These games must also provide every advertised feature across both systems.

Sony is also “strongly” recommending games that release before July 13th to receive updates to add PlayStation 5 compatibility. Any game that becomes a PlayStation 5 compatible game must remain PlayStation 5 compatibile throughout the rest of its life.

There’s no news on whether Sony will be asking particular developers to enhance their titles for the next-gen machine. Whilst Xbox has partnered with some games – such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077 – to provide free remasters for next-gen users, PlayStation has only asked for compatibility.