Sony’s service - now part of the newly-revamped PS Plus Premium, though formerly the separate PlayStation Now subscription - has been home to Red Dead Redemption since 2016. Its departure means there is now no way to play Rockstar’s original cowboy epic on PS4 or PS5. Sony quietly had Red Dead Redemption listed as leaving its streaming service if you looked up the game over the past month, though did not trumpet its departure. The first Red Dead Redemption is now only available to play on current-gen consoles via Xbox backwards compatibility - which, as pointed out by videotech on Twitter, is also where you can play it in up to 4K thanks to Microsoft’s more recent enhancements. While Grand Theft Auto 5 has been launched on three console generations, the original Red Dead Redemption remains an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game. For reasons only known to Rockstar itself, it never officially launched on PC. How many people were still playing the original Red Dead Redemption via PlayStation Plus Premium? Sony doesn’t say. But the move highlights how even blockbuster games can become more difficult to play over time without backwards compatibility. Or, perhaps, unless you still have your PS3 plugged in. Rockstar is now pouring all of its resources into Grand Theft Auto 6, which recently suffered a devastating leak of work-in-progress images and footage.
