Horizon Forbidden West, Spider-Man: Man Miles Morales 'Built from the Ground Up' for PS5, Despite PS4 Versions

Uhhhhh.... this is strange. Were they being developed in tandem by different teams? How could its be built from the ground up for an SSD and zen 2 cpu but still run on Jaguar cpu on PS4?

Did Microsoft not say a similar thing about Halo,or am I wrong?

Horizon is scaled back on a gameplay level for PS4. Some features will be taken advantage of, but make no mistake, they were not built form the ground-up for PS5. Listen to Isomniac talk about how fast Spider-Man can go on PS4 vs 5, the fundamental design of traversal is changed by being on PS4. This is so stupid. God of War better be PS5 only, because while Hoirzon is a same, I can do without it. God of War needs to deliver.

I'm really disappointed tbh.
There's no way these games have been designed on ps5 from the ground up.
They would not work on ps4.

Chances are they were designed primarily for PS5 but then downgraded for PS4.

I’m willing to be Horizon in particular will have horrible load times.

Just don’t see how that statement can be true when they have to consider the game running on a base PS4 in all their design decisions.

I’m sure it will have all the bells and whistles the PS5 can bring, but there’s no way they were designed in scope and ambition around the PS5’s architecture.

These games will be fantastic regardless, and I'm glad I'll be able to play them even if I can't get my hands on a PS5 (that admittedly I was not planning to do until late 2021 or 2022.)

It's hard to make a huge game from the ground up designed exclusively with the hardware in mind when the hardware was not finalized until a year from launch, tops. It's even harder when the game is a giant Triple A open world game, as its the case with Horizon II and Miles Morales.

These games had no chance to be built for next Gen in mind and also launch on the first year of the console life. What they been spouting so far was just a lie (side topic on how publicly traded companies can lie.)

They could keep the games exclusive to force a faster upgrade rate, but even at max manufacturing capacity, it will take years to get anywhere near the PS4 install base, and they want these games to sell as many copies as possible (same reason eventually they will also go to PC).

True huge Triple A games not possible in PS4 won't start showing up until Holidays 2021.

This is still a huge meme worthy moment, with that whole "We Believe in Generations" campaign.

@Guardian-Force there are going to be plenty of features that just could not be implemented because the games had to launch within the first 12 months of the console lifespan. It's hard to plan and implement features when the dev cycle starts 2 years before hardware is finalized.

Obviously, marketing sugar coating.

If they run decent, I'll be glad to play them on my ps4 pro. I never upgrade soon anyway.

I'm sure they'll make plenty of stuff later that'll make full use of the ps5. That's how it goes.

@Ken_Masters These consoles are going to sell out, don't worry, Sony will be OK, you don't have to worry about their well-being.

Built from the ground up... vague execu-speak. While not lying, it implies a lot more than what was actually happening.

Horrible. It's impossible to "build from the ground up" and still support PS4. I'm a developer and this is BS. You can dial back some things to support PS4… but many many features can't be just dialed back.

"Let's say one thing, then do the opposite."

-Sony
-Microsoft

@rachetmarvel
They did but it's only bad when Nintendo or MS pull this. Sony is perfect and does no wrong. This is LOL-worthy that Jim Ryan and co. think anybody with an ounce of commonsense buys this bs. And I'm ok with cross-gen games, Forza Horizon 2 on 360 didn't stop me from buying an Xbox One to play that version of the game. I'll be able to enjoy Horizon: Forbidden West on PS5 while it also exists on PS4. Just be honest about the situation, very annoying that it's so difficult for these business people to do that.

@Royalblues
Been gaming for over 3 decades, I definitely know they see us as nothing more than $ and think we'll believe any bs they spout. Still annoying.

I'm happy they're doing this but it's funny MS got slammed for supporting Xbox One and now Sony is doing it too after all. Of course Halo Infinite didn't even look like it made use of the Series X GPU but Spider-Man and Horizon do. It'll be fine, probably less enemies or dumber physics, but the PS4 had a decent GPU and lots of RAM that have aged well.

@rachetmarvel This sucks that they clearly hid this. But why do people keep bringing this up with Halo lol?

Yeah Microsoft did say a similar thing with Halo....................... and didn't Microsoft show off an Xbox DAMAGING piece of terrible gameplay that killed any hype there was for next gen Xbox, killed even more by the feedback and then delay of Halo???

At least Horizon 2 was so gorgeous looking, not a single person said it looks like a last gen game like Halo Infinite, or even a current gen game at that. That's because a 2021 PS4 game is STILL going to be incredible looking it turns out.

And another thing. Xbox talked up supporting Xbone for years....... and yet they kill production of 2 of their Xbone skus months ago because they are selling so bad. One of them was Xbonex, a console not even 2.5 years old yet. PS4 Pro is still selling strong nearly 4 years later and being made. Why is nobody talking about THAT mixed messaging?

Unless this is some Forza Horizon 2 or Titanfall 1 (downgraded 360 version made by Bluepoint, ironically, it's the opposite of what they usually do) situation, I doubt it.

@andrewsqual kinda seems like your projecting your disappointment. This whole thing is simple games will play better on the new hardware, just seems like neither platform will have true exclusives at launch. Buy it whenever you want.

@andrewsqual
LOL. MS gets raked over the coals routinely.

No, just no. If you’re building games for old 2013 jaguar cpu then it’s meant it’s not “build from ground up” for next-gen, I’m actually disappointed in sony after all “we believe in generation” talk 😕

You can’t design true next-gen games with 2013 old laptop cpu and slow hardrive. I can only believe it if these games are ported to ps4 by others developers like titanfall 1 on xbox one that’s ported to xbox 360 by others devs.

Interesting. Well he said it takes advantage of PS5's feature set. That could mean a lot of things. My guess it means that it'll take advantage of the SSD with faster loading times(obviously) and likely ray tracing among those features. Though, I doubt it was built from the ground up with PS5 in mind. If that were true, then these games wouldn't be on PS4. I'm not bothered by it, as I look forward to playing HZD2 regardless, but it would have been best to just be upfront about it and not try to think that all your consumers are ignorant.

I don't seem a problem with having some PS4 games next year. If Sony just dropped PS4 the minute they showed PS5, many people would take it wrong. The fact that Sony will have a few last-gen leftovers, shows that they care about their customers (who are mostly PS4 owners right now).

From everything I've seen so far next gen is just a prettier version of this gen, Ratchet and Clank is still the only game that doesn't look possible on PS4. Miles Morales looks good but did it look that much different than a PS4 game?

Miles I can sort of understand, but doing horizon like this seems like an utter waste of the potential that thing had to showcase what the ps5 can do. I'm disappointed to be honest.
Absolutely no reason for me to upgrade any time soon. Probably on either camp.

Nobody can defend Sony anymore with their "next-gen only" marketing BS after reading this.

I'm still excited for Spiderman MM and HFW but after knowing that the PS4 is capable of running these games makes me skeptical if it can truly deliver next gen features from its predecessor.

I don’t believe them. These will be PS4 games with a better frame rate and some graphical features taking advantage of the better hardware.

@Ken_Masters Unless you work at a company, selling units isn't something you should be worrying about.

I thought Spider Man looked great. It's obvious they did build them for ps5, but will scale things back. Perhaps remove some things here and there. Not entirely sure, but they could have just taken assets and then built the ps4 version afterwards. Everyone's very quick to be a skeptic, here.

@TheRedComet couldn’t possibly have worse load times than the Crash Trilogy remasters...

I remember Phil Spencer being described as a hypocrite around here for similar reasons.
I can't help it: I'm a sucker for irony.

Meh. So the PS4 gen doesn't end with the one-two of The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima after all. That's good, no?

The PS5 versions will look and play better than their PS4/Pro counterparts that's for sure so it's still worth upgrading, that's if you're financially able to. I was until covid hit and now I'll have to wait until well into next year before being able to upgrade.

It sucks but that's just the way it is. Still, there will be plenty to play on the PS4 including some games that I haven't played yet such as FF VII remake and Ghost of Tsushima. Then there are upcoming titles like Miles Morales and Assassin's Creed Valhalla and of course Cyberpunk 2077.

Surely in this situation everybody wins?

😜

H:FW will be massively gimped to run on PS4. Guerrilla have already stated that the poly count for Aloy in the new game alone is more than the combined poly count of ALL the machines from the 1st game. Add in the massive draw distance and complex water shaders / physics and I see issues with 7 year old hardware.

I know the Decima engine is cutting edge but still, it'll be a huge downgrade. I still don't see how the 'SSD' being the 'game changer' can all of a sudden be not a factor.

I completely understand why they are doing this. A 120 million install base cannot be just forgotten, but their marketing has sucked, which is a shame.

I've always been a PlayStation fan, although really enjoyed owning a 360 (or 7) during that generation. I won't be riding to pick up the PS5 at launch. 2021 it will come into its own.

Silly Sony 🤦🏼‍♂️

@themightyant Definitely agree. I was just disappointed the marketing was implying all them games were next gen only which excited people.
I was a lot more disappointed with game price hike in Europe. The equivalent of 95 US dollars for Demon’s Souls...

... Oddly enough I'm totally cool with this... Spidey was one of their biggest selling games EVER... to completely ignore the PS4 base would have been criminal... similar with Horizon... and you never harness the full power of a new console at launch... it'll take 2021/22 until we get some AMAZING next gen titles... choice is good!

I'm.not getting a ps5 for a long time so knowing I can play these on ps4 makes me so happy. As long as the differences aren't as bad as the 360 version of shadow of mordor then I'll be fine. I really doubt there will be any compromise.

@Guardian-Force Gorilla stated years ago they wanted flying mounts in Horizon but it was not possible on the PS4.

It would be funny if Horizon 2 had flying mounts on the PS5 but not the PS4.

Do I mind that those not adopting the PS5 can play some of the games on PS4? Of course not. Cross gen games are largely the norm - I mean I was expecting most of the launch titles to be pretty much beefed up PS4 games anyway.

But I don't like being misled or mixed messages. I don't expect to have to follow a third party commentator on Twitter to know the exact details of a launch when I have been led to believe otherwise. It hasn't annoyed me enough not to get a pre-order in but I think this is a big fumble.

I’m guessing he’s referring to 3D audio and haptic feedback as the PS5 features these games were built to utilize. Those are probably things that devs don’t have to do anything with, they just don’t work if the hardware isn’t there. Probably turn down some LODs and ray tracing as well. Pretty sneaky wording there, Jimmy!

the chances of sony showcasing the PS4 version of HFW at any point are probably pretty slim, so the difference between the PS5 and PS4 versions might be apparent until it's released into the wild.

maybe the game is closer to being ready than anticipated.. and is already running on PS4.. otherwise they could run into a situation where they built a shiny PS5 version, only to run into huge optimisation problems on PS4 and have to scrap it, even though they said it would be coming. that'd be embarrassing.

I don't see how it's possible.

Cerny talked about how the SSD is so fast that devs can, for example, design cities differently. In the past, cities had lots of "hallways" because the game couldn't load all assets at once and thus used hallways to hide everything else while it loaded, but with the SSD developers wouldn't have to worry about this anymore. This is why Meridian city in Horizon has two entrances - one that's a 30 second road and another that's a 30 second elevator. If Horizon 2 works on PS4 then all of these things will have the same limitations. Same with web-slinging faster through the city as Spiderman - they can't give him a mega speed boost move if the move won't work on PS4.

@Ken_Masters "Oh course these consoles going be sell out because PlayStation has bigger fan-base just like Nintendo but my real question that how much people not going to buy the PlayStation 5, especially PC fanboys"

1) sooner or later, those that care will upgrade. Maybe when they can afford it, or maybe when the things are actually available.

2) All 4 consoles will sell out at launch (both ps5s, both xbox series letters). Has nothing to do with the size of the fan base, but the limited supply at launch. Even if only XBox fans wanted to buy a PS5, all PS5s would sell out.

3) Why would anyone want to force PC fanboys to buy a PS5? They wont, even when dangling exclusives. The small sub-set that actually bought a PS4 only for exclusives, what is wrong with them getting more bang out of their investment on PS4 and buy more Sony games?