After recent updates for Destiny 2, Check, and the great Nioh games PlayStation 5 owners are in a golden age of cross-gen games. But if you’re not careful, you could very well be playing the PlayStation 4 version of a cross-gen game on your PS5. The horror!
Microsoft’s latest consoles, the Xbox Series X and S, serve the next-gen version of a game (if it exists and if the developer hasn’t taken it out for a fee) through an automated process called ‘Smart Delivery’. That may sound like a non-feature feature – a term coined in a Seattle boardroom full of comms majors – but it’s actually quite useful. You could reasonably argue that Smart Delivery is one of the defining features of Microsoft’s two next-gen consoles.
However, the process is not automatic on PlayStation. It’s all too easy to get the PlayStation 4 version of a game that has been around for generations (like Bugsnax, Check, or the just renewed Nioh 2).
As a rule of thumb, pay attention to the text below a game’s icon on the main dashboard. If it says ‘PS4’ next to the title, you have downloaded the PS4 version. If there is an arrow next to ‘PS4’, it means you not downloaded the PS4 version, but you could easily do that by tapping the “X” button too quickly. (Yes, you can have both the PS4 and PS5 version of a game installed on your console.) If it doesn’t say “PS4” at all, it means you downloaded the PS5 version. Well done.
To switch to the PS5 version of for example Bugsnax, hover over the game icon and press. You will see a menu with three dots. Click on that. Then select “PS5 | Full | Bugsnax. After it’s downloaded, you should be ready to go.
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The process is not always that smooth. Sometimes PS4 games on disc require an extra set of steps. Last week, Sony released an update That reportedly solved a pervasive problem where the PS5 would download the PS4 version of a game, even if a PS5 version existed. After the update, that shouldn’t happen again.
But what if it is doing?
Take Nioh 2 for example, which many of us have been playing since last week’s release The Nioh collection sparked renewed interest in the series. Last November, Team Ninja announced a free upgrade for both games, supporting 4K resolution and frame rates up to 120 fps and allowing the continuation of save files. But if you have installed Nioh 2 on your PS5 via disc before last week’s system update, you still won’t get that PS5 version automatically. Here’s how to fix that:
- You could be one Nioh 2 icon on the PS5 main dashboard on the Games page. (If no icon appears for it, go to your games library and boot Nioh 2. You only need to load it for a split second to create the icon on your dashboard.)
- Hover over the icon and scroll down to the three dot menu on the game page.
- Click on it and then click on ‘View product’.
- You will be taken to Nioh 2‘s page in the PlayStation Store. When you open that three-dot menu, a list of all available versions of the game will appear: Nioh 2 – PS4, The Nioh collection, Nioh 2 Remastered (PS5 upgrade). Click on the latter.
- If your Nioh 2 disc is in the drive, you will see an option to download the free upgrade.
PlayStation also brings an additional complication: a small line of last-generation games that have received PS5 updates but have not received any special PS5 versions. For example, since the release of the PS5, both Spirit of Tsushima and God of war have been updated for PS5. Both now run at a nice frame rate of 60 fps on PS5, but are still technically (extremely beautiful) PS4 games. The easiest way to find out exactly what versions of a particular game exist is to visit the PlayStation Store page for a game you’re curious about. If you click on the three-dot menu, you will see a list of all available versions. Only those with a PS5 specific version will show a PS5 version available for purchase.
The Xbox’s faintly named Smart Delivery feature sounds pretty good right now, right?
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