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Sony is planning cross-generation gameplay between PS4 and PS5

Cross-play and cross-save support is all the rage now and Sony could embrace it to ease the transition into the next generation. PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan says the plan is to offer cross-generational gameplay between the PS4 and PS5.

Sony is gearing up to reveal the PlayStation 5 (not the official name yet) but it looks like the company wants to make the transition to the platform to be a slow and deliberate one. PlayStation CEO and 25-year Sony vet Jim Ryan spoke with CNET and expressed that the plan is for cross-generational gameplay between the PS5 and PS4.

Sony has a massive PS4 user base and it makes sense for the company to do anything it can to transition those players over to PS5. Home consoles, unlike PC, have to start at zero with each generation of hardware. All of the success of the previous generation can help encourage new purchases but it’s not an automatic ticket to cash in.

It was already revealed that the PS5 will be backward compatible with PS4 games but Sony is planning to take things a bit further than that. The plan is to have an experience where gamers can jump from PS4 to the new console and go back. Ideally, players on both will be able to continue online experiences together.

“Whether it’s backward compatibility or the possibility of cross-generational play, we’ll be able to transition that community to next-gen,” Ryan told the publication. “It won’t be a binary choice about whether you have to be either on PlayStation 4 or next-gen to continue your friendship.”

The transition from PS3 to PS4 wasn’t handled as gracefully as a cross-generational experience could be. Exclusives released late in the PS3 lifecycle like The Last of Us appeared on the next console in visually upgraded collections but the multiplayer community was still kept separate. The PS3 servers for that game and the Uncharted titles are being shut down in September but what if their servers were the same as PS4? Non-exclusives like Destiny, at the time, did the same between the PS3 and PS4 or Xbox 360 and Xbox One but the next PlayStation console could usher in a reality more accommodating to consumers of all kinds.

We know that the next PlayStation won’t be releasing this year, a reveal could come later this year. Sony skipped E3 2019 and the PlayStation Experience for 2018 but a PSX at the end of 2019 could be the perfect platform to kick open the door for a next-gen launch at the end of 2020.

Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.

Why does this run so well on Apple devices?

The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.

After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.

Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.

Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”