Sorry, you can’t move your abandoned copy of PT to the PS5

Enlarge / PT scenes like this will not be visible on the PS5, even if they were seen briefly during the preview period.

Remember PT? The free “playable trailer” was released for the PS4 in 2014 to promote a Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro silent Hill sequel with Norman Reedus. But when that project was canceled in 2015, the demo was removed from PlayStation Store, even as a download.

This means the short horror demo is now only playable on some of the 1 million PS4 systems that downloaded it before shutdown. These units sold at heavily inflated prices on eBay as the hard-to-access demo rose to cult classic status among horror game fans.

In the run-up to the PS5 launch this week, there was speculation that these trick-or-treating demos could be freed from their PS4 prisons via a transfer to a backward-compatible PS5. Now, however, several outlets have confirmed that the game cannot be moved from a PS4 to a PS5; When you try through the system’s App Transfer menu, you just get a message saying, “You cannot use this PS4 game or application on the PS5”.

What makes this story even stranger is the fact that PT Apparently was transferable and fully playable on PS5 earlier in the preview period. Polygon reports that the game has transferred and has gone very well on the PS5 starting October 24, and GamesRadar reported the same from October 27. However, in the days that followed, this situation changed to block both the transfer and the play on the PS5. Even previously transferred copies would be listed as “Playable on PS4” when viewed in the PS5’s Library menu.

In a sense, this is no surprise. For years, Konami has worked to cut off access to PT, and the company had previously confirmed that the game would not be downloadable on the PS5. Yet the fact that PT was briefly playable on preview PS5 units shows Konami and Sony had to make an affirmative decision to limit the game’s availability on the new system.

It seems that PT will only join a small handful of other PS4 games that are not playable on PS5. And pre-PS4 PlayStation games are not playable on the PS5 unless they are available through PlayStation Now streaming.

For now, if you missed your chance to download PT years ago your best bet might be recreations designed for the PC or in the PS4 game maker Dreams.