Unfortunately, Remedy Entertainment‘s game doesn’t offer a seamless transition between console generations.

Yesterday afternoon, we discussed what Sony is providing in February for the PlayStation Plus subscribers. One of the games will be Control Ultimate Edition. It’s a game where buying the base game and the season pass is not equal to the Ultimate Edition, which is necessary to have the upgrade route from the 2013 consoles to the 2020 models available. Sony thought they’re doing a better move by providing the subscribers both the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions of the game.

Unfortunately, you can’t continue Jesse Faden’s story on the PlayStation 5 where you stopped on the PlayStation 4. „If you are playing the new Xbox Series X|S/PlayStation 5 version of Control Ultimate Edition, your save file will NOT carry over. This is because the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of Control Ultimate Edition features a much newer version of the Northlight Engine compared to the one used in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game that shipped in August 2019,” 505 Games’ FAQ wrote. (They are the publisher for Control.)

Thomas Puha, Remedy Entertainment’s communications director, added a few more details about the situation on Twitter: „Save games, unfortunately, do not transfer over from previous gen to next-gen. The version of our engine in the next-gen Control is way different from the version used in the previous-gen Control. Long story short, a lot of changes in things like how we handle data, etc.” He added that they too had to make a sacrifice: „[Save transfering] is not a trivial thing to achieve, and you have to understand that small dev teams need to make tough choices. So focus on performance and graphics over bringing save game compatibility. its a bit different when you are a first-party studio mega-developer.”

Control Ultimate Edition will launch on February 2 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. The PlayStation Plus subscribers can thus play from day one, but they will have to restart the game, which will offer a Performance Mode on the next-gen consoles. It targets a 60 FPS frame rate with 1440p render resolution and 4K output. The Graphics Mode targets 30 FPS with ray tracing (transparency and reflections) at 1220p render resolution and 4K output. On Xbox Series S, only the Performance mode is available, targeting 60 FPS with no ray tracing, at 900p render resolution, and 1080p output. This is a limitation of the hardware, not the game. The PlayStation 5, according to the publisher’s FAQ, will support the DualSense controller’s vibrations and triggers, and the consoles’ Activities and Help will offer cards and videos that help guide you through the game, and keep track of your progress.

Source: PSU, 505 Games