Launching cross-gen games on PS5 is not an easy task

We at Gamereactor try to be a public service for your better understanding of hardware and the enjoying of your software. We have been toying around with our new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S for a while, before they were available to the public, trying to unravel little secrets that for sure will help you in having a better experience. And here is a very important one: selecting the right version of a cross-generation game on PlayStation 5.

A few new games are split between the new and the old gen version. We are not talking about slight graphical enhancements, but pure next-gen PS5 games vs back-compatible PS4 games, both installed in the same SSD and running in the same console. In this case, you just see one icon on the Home menu, and if you click on it, you are probably running the old one instead of the new one.

For you to be sure that you are launching the right game, scroll a little bit down and just don't click the "Play", but right next to it, in the dots button. This action displays a menu where you can see which is the alternative version (or versions) of the same game you can launch. You must know that the game name not written down in there is the version you will launch by pressing play.

One more thing. The icon in the PS5 Home dashboard remembers your last choice. That means that you will never have to go back to it if you just play one version forever.

In this video recorded by Gamereactor, we open the PS5 version of NBA 2K21 in first place and then we change to the PS4 version of the game in the same PS5 console. There is a third option in this case, the game demo we installed first. Get familiar with this menu as many cross-gen game with future free upgrades will require it.