Why F1 25 won’t be on PS4 and Xbox One

Whereas EA Sports WRC switched to Unreal Engine 4, F1 25 will use Codemasters’ proprietary Ego engine. The latest version has powered every game in the series since F1 2015, though there have been visual improvements over the years.

F1 25’s system requirements are nearly identical to last year’s game on PC. Codemasters has also said before that its in-house engine is scalable, making it easy to adapt F1 games for different systems.

You would think, then, that F1 25 would have no trouble running on the last-generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. And so it came as a surprise when Codemasters confirmed that F1 25 won’t get a PS4 or Xbox One release.

This will be the first time an F1 game has skipped these systems since 2015. While the PS4 and Xbox One are nearly ten years old, Sony confirmed last year that the PS4 makes up half of active PlayStation users, with 49 million players still using the older console.  

Consequently, a significant number of players who haven’t upgraded to the current-gen consoles will potentially miss out on this year’s F1 game.  

“It’s really to set us up for the future,” F1 25’s Senior Creative Director Lee Mather explained when asked why F1 25 is skipping the last-generation consoles.

“It releases resources that would have previously been serving the previous generation of consoles.”

“You will definitely see an improvement in the graphical fidelity”

“When you consider the scale of our game as well, it’s a huge QV resource we need to test across all those platforms. It opens up the ability for us to focus on other areas of the game, but also for the long term. This year, you will definitely see an improvement in the graphical fidelity.”

F1 25 will benefit from path tracing on high-spec PCs, a form of ray tracing that simulates how light interacts with objects more realistically. While the console versions won’t support path tracing, Mather assures that F1 25 will look better on every platform now that more resources can be poured into the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions.

“You’ll see that across consoles as well,” Mather said, referring to lighting improvements. “The track looks better because we’ve added a lighting pass, which we can focus on fewer platforms. Obviously, PC is still incredibly broad.”

Mather added that ending support for the last-generation consoles will also bring “long-term” gains for the series in the future.

“We’ve got a very scalable engine, so you’ll see what we did on PC is very consistent as well. You’ll see it in the long term. It will open up the opportunity to have more intelligent and dynamic AI because we’ll have the capacity to look ahead and think more about the multiple chain corners, for example.

“It’s an opportunity where we’ve had gains this year, but the gains are very much going to come in the long term.”

When asked if declining sales on the previous-generation consoles affected the decision not to bring F1 25 to PS4 and Xbox One, Mather could not confirm since EA is a listed company.   

Are you disappointed that F1 25 is ditching the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, or looking forward to the potential improvements? Let us know in the comments below. 

F1 25 launches on 30th May for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with early access starting on 27th May for those who pre-order the Iconic Edition.

For more on F1 25, check out our previews of the revamped My Team and Braking Point 3 story mode.