The Gotham Knights game unveiled its gameplay recently. This was an opportunity for the studio behind the title to make an interesting announcement: the abandonment of the PS4 and Xbox One versions. This is the first time that a “cross-gen” blockbuster has finally decided to abandon the old consoles.
Gotham Knights is one of the most anticipated games of 2022 and recently it showed quite a bit during a long gameplay streak. The WB Games Montreal studio also made an interesting announcement: the cancellation of the PS4 and Xbox One version of the game.
Gotham Knights will therefore be released next October on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. It’s the first cross-gen blockbuster from a third-party studio to abandon the “old” consoles. Some already see it as the beginning of the end for the transition that began in 2020.
The PS5 and Xbox Series X are starting to take hold
The fact is that video games are going through a period that is as unprecedented as it is strange. The new consoles, the PS5 and Xbox Series X, arrived in the midst of the COVID outbreak and were hit hard by component breakages. Thereby, many gamers have been slow to get one. Even today, supply remains difficult.
Thereby, many third-party developers have opted for a so-called “cross-gen” release. Moreover, the builders themselves have encouraged such practices. Microsoft games are thus intergenerational, even new ones like Halo Infinite or Forza Horizon 5. On the Sony side, in-house developers have strived to release their latest titles on PS4 and PS5 (with a few exceptions like Returnal or Ratchet and Clank ). This is the case of Horizon Forbidden West or Gran Turismo 7. Even God of War Ragnarok will be released on PS4.
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But console shortages are deceptive. The sales figures are excellent, as evidenced by the more than 19 million PS5s sold worldwide. Abandoning the “old-gen” therefore makes sense today. In addition to reaching a large audience, developers will be able to stop expending resources and energy to run their game on consoles with aging hardware.
Gotham Knights could therefore be the game that will lead the way. We will have to wait for the month of June and the many announcements planned to see if the big developers are ready to abandon the consoles of almost ten years to devote themselves fully to new hardware.