If you buy a major late-2013 release, such as Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty Ghosts for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 with the intention of upgrading to a next-gen version, buyer beware: you won’t be able to take some of your in-game progress with you.
While Sony, Microsoft, various game publishers and even some retailers have been trumpeting various upgrade deals — some of which can fetch you the next-gen version of a game for just $US10 more — anyone thinking of doing this should be aware that their save files won’t be shifting over, not in their entirety.
Players of the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 versions of Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty Ghosts, which launch on October 29 and November 5, will be able to upgrade to next-gen versions at the launch of the PlayStation 4 (November 15) and Xbox One (November 22). And they’ll see their multiplayer progress carry over. But reps for the game’s publishers at EA and Activision have confirmed to Kotaku that progress in the games’ singleplayer campaigns will not carry over. Anyone who goes for an upgrade will be starting those campaigns — admittedly not the main draw of these fall first-person-shooters — from scratch.
The single-player campaign of Assassin’s Creed games is more of a draw, but save progress for the single-player of October 29’s Assassin’s Creed IV won’t carry over either, a Ubisoft rep confirmed to Kotaku. That rep did not yet respond to a follow-up about whether multiplayer progress will carry over. If/when they do we’ll let you know.
A rep for Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs, which has also been featured by Sony’s upgrade promotions, was not able to ascertain by the writing of this post whether the save progress in that game would carry over. Given that the PS4 version of that game will launch alongside the PS4 on November 15 and will be out for current-gen, PC and Wii U systems on November 19, it’s less likely that day-one purchasers would be faced with a choice of buying a current-gen version and then pondering an upgrade. For those not getting a next-gen console at launch, however, any lack of save-transfer could be an issue. If we get word one way or the other, we’ll let you know.
There is little or no precedent for cross-generational save file transfers, so the inability to move one’s progress from, say, the PS3 version of ACIV to a PS4 one may seem obvious. Nevertheless, there will certainly also be those who’ve plunged 10 hours into the current-gen version of the game who will stand in front of a PS4 on a store shelf, size up the machine’s launch-day lack of backwards compatibility, and sigh at the prospect of having to start the game all over again or keep their PS3 handy to play more of it. Can’t the PS4 version be told how far in you are? It seems that it’s not that simple.
Comments
14 responses to “You Can Upgrade Some Big 2013 Games To Next-Gen, But There’s A Catch”
Did anyone reasonably expect this to not be the case?
Exactly. I always assumed the “upgraded” version would be entirely independent. I couldn’t care less, to be honest.
Current list of confirmed titles for Australian customers for the PS3/4 versions and prices…
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2013/09/19/how-to-upgrade-select-ps3-games-to-ps4-version/
Good link. I would so upgrade watch dogs
Meh. I wasn’t going to buy those anyway. There’s still a lot worth playing in this generation. So those who want ’em should just wait for next gen.
I remember playing GTA 2 as a kid on Gameboy color, instead of having a save game you were given a 6 or 7 letter code at the end of each mission, when you started the game up again you entered this code and it would tell the game where you were up to and what stuff you had in your inventory. It’s a super primitive method but perhaps it could be implemented in this instance to allow people to keep their campaign progress when switching generations? Given the complexity of these games I imagine the code would be much longer than 6 or 7 characters, but this wouldn’t be such a big deal given that it would only be entered once – when first starting the game on the next gen console.
Because people are going to really care about CoD or BF4 single player campaigns. I don’t really see the point in playing AC4 or Watchdogs then replaying it on PS4/XO. If you are going to buy next gen console then just buy the games for next gen.
Only good thing from this is that you can buy the PS3 version then then use the code to buy PS4 version then sell the PS3 disc.
It needs the PS3 disc to run on PS4.
http://uk.playstation.com/ps4upgrade/
I would love my GTA 5 saves to go from 360 to PC.
That doesn’t even make sense – dont most games save locally and to a cloud somewhere? Or is that more PC based?
Did anyone actually think this was going to happen though?
I just kind of assumed you would have to start over with the next gen version…
Something like AC4, it would make it not worth getting the current gen version. Something like that I think you’d wait.
COD, yeah it’s still fine. You want the MP. The SP you may or may not play intil the new console.
No precedent?
PS1 saves on a PS1 memory card plugged into a PS2 worked. Mind you, that was via a memory card, but surely we could do the same with a USB stick?
Except there wasnt any enhanced PS2 versions of PSone games where this method was valid
I am not sure you’ve actually read what this article is about