Dragon Age 4 Will Reportedly Be A 'Next-Gen Only' Release

Well, this is probably a 2023 release, so if they were still supporting last gen at that point, then I'd be concerned!

Good, porting games for older consoles limits what developers can do for newer consoles. As much as people are struggling to get consoles, gaming needs to evolve and leave the last gen behind. There's plenty of new games on PS4 and XB1 they can play in the meantime

Good, hopefully more and more games will start to ditch last gen consoles and make our new gen consoles worth buying

@A01 Yup. According to the title. It took me few seconds to click though.

Like others have said, given that it's still likely a ways off, this is not a surprise at all. I doubt anybody will be making anything for last gen systems by then.

Quite right too! All this guff (and it is total guff) about previous generations not holding back games on next (current) gen is absolute rubbish. Not only does it undoubtedly take longer for Developers to create games capable of running on both generations, but as was clearly demonstrated with Cyberpunk 2077; a game that is capable of running on the next gen, was far less capable of doing so on the older generations (indeed, in the case of Cyberpunk it should never have aimed to release of last gen consoles in the first place, but that's a whole other story). Games that aim to take advantage of the new generation of consoles should not even attempt to bring it to the older ones at the same time. Very glad to hear that Developers are beginning to make the move to new gen only...

@Fiendish-Beaver totally agree, I mean so far on my series s and ps5 I've played 3 next gen dedicated games (the medium, ratchet and Returnal) it's nearly been a year and only a handful of true next gen games is just awful. Even halo infinite, forza horizon 5, god of war 2 and horizon forbidden West aren't fully next gen, I don't actually know what the next pure next gen game is that's coming out. I'm glad I've got both next gen consoles but there's just not enough games to justify owning them right now

Thank goodness. Tired of games being "held back" due to this last gen nonsense.

Next gen tevinter letsgooo, I wonder if we will get a true open world this time around. Might be a better way to experience the beginning of the game after the complaints about da3's Hinterlands.

@krzysztof81 omg another Krzysztof in the house!?!? Yak się masz!!

@Fiendish-Beaver Cyberpunk started development before the xbox one released. The fact that the game couldn't run on what was, at the time, next gen hardware, and somehow targeted hardware that hadn't even started being planned yet, is 100% the developer's fault.

@Richnj I couldn't agree more. There must have been a point though, during development, that they realised their ambition was no longer able to be sustained on the Xbox One and the PS4, and that they should solely concentrate on the next gen (that or scale back the game, or delay the game for probably a year so that it could actually run properly on both generations).

Absolutely the Developers fault, though they may have been answering to their Investors whims, but if that was the case, then the Investors likely got what they deserved because they will undoubtedly have received a lesser return on their investment by having the game release too early. Had the game released in a polished and playable state, it would likely have sold way more copies than it otherwise did, or will do...

@Fiendish-Beaver The problem with games like that, that get stuck in dev hell, is that the ambition overrides the sensible planning. Had these guys been given more time and better hardware, they still would have wasted that trying to expand the game even further. Potentially requiring even further restarts.

I think that's why the publisher put their foot down. Even on PC, systems were unfinished and bugs a plenty. And that was the lead platform. The game they had was not ready for launch because of the poor restraint. XSX and PS5 would have suffered too, even if they weren't last gen versions.

@Richnj I think that is often the case; Developers overreach, with their ambition stretching beyond their capabilities or their available hardware. Not sure that the Publishers were the issue with regards to Cyberpunk, bearing in mind that it was self-published! However, as you say, CD began development of Cyberpunk on last gen consoles, but they would undoubtedly have had access to current gen long before we ever did, and so their must have come a point in time where they absolutely knew that the last gen consoles could not cope with the scope of the game. One of two things likely happened then, firstly they told their Investors that the game could not run properly on last gen, and the Investors said we don't care, we want the game to hit as many user bases as possible, so proceed as originally planned. Or CD simply didn't tell their Investors, and having opened up pre-orders for last gen way too early, they were left with three options, delay still further (which may have been rebuffed by the Investors), refund all pre-orders and open up pre-orders purely for next gen (PC would obviously not be a factor in this), or release regardless and fix the mess later, perhaps not realising just how big the blowback would be. We may never know the exact course of events, but I do think this absolute fustercluck has actually had a positive impact on the industry insomuch as we have seen a significant number of game delays since the release of Cyberpunk, and whilst many will likely cite Covid as the main factor, or just the usual run of the mill delays we have always seen, I do think that there will have been some games that would have released under the old banner of 'release now, fix and patch later' that we have long seen, but looked at the community response, and the damage to the reputation of CD, and decided that that was a slice of the action they would rather avoid. I'm pretty sure that over time things will lapse once again, but whilst Cyberpunk remains fresh in the minds of Developers, Investors and Publishers, we may at least not see quite so many games releasing in an unfit state.