The PS4 and Xbox One are finally hitting the end of the line, and Techland just put the final nail into the coffin. In a sudden announcement shared on social media on July 14, 2026, the studio confirmed it has made the tough call to cancel the long-promised last-gen versions of its upcoming zombie game, Dying Light: The Beast. Originally meant to join the gap between consoles, the standalone adventure will now launch exclusively on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
For a player base that has watched previous-generation support far longer than other usual games, this changes things for them. The technical reality side of things for this is that supporting decade-old hardware has officially caught up to modern gaming design and development, major studios are no longer willing to limit their creative visions for hardware from 2013. So now anyone who was planning to play the game on an older console, they are now eligible for a full refund if they don’t plan on upgrading to new- gen hardware.
Why Techland Dropped Last-Gen Consoles for Dying Light: The Beast
Techland explained on social media that Dying Light: The Beast was built from day one to push current-gen hardware to its limits. The studio admitted that the game’s massive open world, crisp graphics, and fast parkour simply require memory and processing power that the PS4 and Xbox One don’t have. As development moved forward, it became clear that forcing the game onto older machines would mean massive visual downgrades and terrible performance. Instead of shipping a broken, compromised product that ruins all their hard work, Techland chose to ditch the older consoles entirely to protect the gameplay experience.
After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision that Dying Light: The Beast will no longer be released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
— Dying Light (@DyingLightGame) July 14, 2026
Dying Light: The Beast was built from the ground up to take full advantage of current-generation hardware. Its open world,…
This technical roadblock isn’t new for the studio. History is repeating itself here, back in 2015, the original Dying Light was supposed to launch on the PS3 and Xbox 360 before Techland scrapped those versions for the exact same reasons. For The Beast, heavy features like high-speed vehicle challenges and the dense forest environments of Castor Woods need fast asset streaming. That is something only the high-speed NVMe solid-state drives in modern consoles can actually handle, so it made sense to scrap this version all together and put in all the time and money on the game for newer hardware.
The Grand Theft Auto 6 Effect on Last Gen Consoles
This move fits perfectly into the bigger picture as the gaming industry gears up for its biggest shift in a decade. With Grand Theft Auto 6 right around the corner, millions of players are finally making the jump to current-gen consoles. Rockstar’s massive sequel is strictly modern-hardware like PlayStation 5 and Xbox series S and X only, which is forcing many users who were holding on to their older consoles to finally retire them.
Since Grand Theft Auto 6 is easily the most anticipated game of the decade in gaming history, it makes little sense for developers like Techland to waste time, money, and testing hours on a legacy ecosystem that will be completely obsolete in a matter of months after the release of Grand Theft Auto 6.
So by pulling the plug on last-gen versions now, Techland can shift all their resources toward polishing current-gen performance and mapping out future expansions for the game on newer hardware. The era of trying to make games work across both old and new hardware is officially dead, and titles like Dying Light: The Beast are finally giving players a taste of what modern consoles can deliver when they aren’t held back by the hardware limitations in the game.
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