The PlayStation 5 has now been available for over a year and a half, and consoles continue to sell out worldwide often as soon as they return to stock. Sony is even promising to dramatically increase production of the PS5 going forward to try and catch up to demand. And yet there continues to be robust support for the PS4 with no evidence of abatement. Questions regarding the slow transition to the new generation of consoles even prompted a response from Sony, which explained that the PS4 won't be going away any time soon.
Sony recently held an investor presentation focusing on growth comparisons between the PS4 and PS5. In a section of the presentation titled "Evolving Shape of First-Party Portfolio," Sony compares its platform support in three different years: 2019, 2022, and 2025. 2019 shows PS4 making up 90% of Sony's releases, with 10% on PC. 2022 shows around 35% of releases on PS5 and another 35% on both PS4 and PS5. The 2025 chart shows PS5 releases making up 50% of all Sony game releases and no PS4 releases at all.
The clear message is that Sony is planning to have no first-party releases for PS4 by the fiscal year 2025 at the latest. Since there's no information on 2024, it's entirely possible Sony plans to stop supporting the PS4 with first-party releases earlier than 2025. But going off of Sony's own outlook, first-party releases for PS4 will end before 2025.
By no means does this mean that Sony is going to be ramping down its first-party development investment, either. A separate series of charts in the presentation shows that Sony plans to dramatically increase investment in PlayStation studios. Not only will it increase investment in existing IPs, but it plans to at least double if not triple its investment in the development of new IPs.
These first-party titles won't be exclusive to PS5, though. Where in 2019 90% of new releases were on PS5 and 10% were on PC, by 2025 only 50% of releases will be on the PS5. The remaining releases will be on either PC or mobile devices, with a split of around 30% to 20%, respectively.
Sony's support for the PS4 coming to an end has always been an inevitability. The shift started with the launch of the PS5, with both Demon's Souls and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart being exclusives. PlayStation has delivered major game releases on both PS4 and PS5 since, like with Horizon Zero Dawn, and God of War Ragnarok is supposed to support both platforms, too. Odds are, when Sony does decide to make the complete transition to PS5, it'll be big news. PS4 support won't disappear in silence, so expect further updates as they become available.
Source: Sony