PS5’s messy save transfers could now be a thing of the past

Transferring a PS4 save to PS5 ought to turn into a much more seamless expertise in the future, if Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut is something to go by.

The PS5 model of Sucker Punch’s open-world samurai epic gives an choice to switch an present PS4 save straight from the sport’s fundamental menu, and it’s solely the second sport that doesn’t require you to {download} an present PlayStation 4 save file that has already been uploaded to the cloud.

As identified by Digital Foundry, this is because of a technical challenge on PS5 that has just lately been resolved, and it ought to pave the option to smoother save transfers that require much less hoops for gamers and builders to leap by means of.

Digital Foundry expertise editor Richard Leadbetter stated: “Up until recently, the PS5 system software has [sic] no visibility or access to any PlayStation 4 data on your console, meaning that highly convoluted means were required to move progress from one generation to the next. Essentially, the PS4 version of the game had to be patched to allow game saves to be uploaded to the cloud.”

Leadbetter goes on so as to add: “Moving over to PS5, the cloud data would then be downloaded and progress could continue. Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered are two good examples of this workaround in action. However, more recent titles including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and now Ghost of Tsushima have allowed for native import of PS4 games.”

Analysis: Save switch woes ought to hopefully be a thing of the past

A katana stuck in the ground amid a stormy backdrop in Ghost of Tsushima

(Image credit score: Sucker Punch Productions)

The approach PlayStation 5 handles save transfers when upgrading a PS4 sport to PS5 has felt like a needlessly sophisticated course of, and one that always includes a number of steps. It’s additionally resulted in some gamers being unable to hold on their progress in the event that they’d beforehand offered a copy of a PS4 sport and didn’t add their save progress to the cloud.

In comparability to Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, which use Xbox Smart Delivery to seamlessly improve last-gen video games to the current-gen variations, Sony’s execution of transferring saves and upgrading video games usually hasn’t been as clean. The truth that each save is routinely uploaded into the cloud on Xbox implies that gamers’ knowledge is at all times out there, and immediately synced when required.

That’s not the case on PlayStation, as not solely does PS Plus supply a meager 100GB of storage for PlayStation Plus customers (it’s limitless on Xbox), however those that don’t subscribe to Sony’s subscription service do not need entry to cloud storage in any respect.

It nonetheless isn’t good then, however the means for the PS5 to acknowledge PS4 save recordsdata on the console itself, quite than depend on the cloud, ought to make next-gen upgrades much less of a problem in the future.