With few exceptions, new generations of game consoles come with the expectation that anything from the previous system will not work on the new console.
PlayStation 3 games don't run on the PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Wii U games don't run on the Nintendo Switch. Such is the way of most modern game consoles — with the exception of the Xbox One.
Instead, Microsoft turned its Xbox Live subscription service into a kind of persistent digital library. If you owned digital Xbox 360 games, and those games are supported on the Xbox One, then you automatically own them on your new console once you log in with your Xbox Live account.
It set an important precedent: With the Xbox One / PlayStation 4 generation of game consoles, console owners expect their digital purchases to carry forward like they would on smartphones.
But Sony never quite caught up with that notion, and it remains an important distinction between Sony and Microsoft's consoles. With the PlayStation 5, Sony has a chance to fix that oversight — and it must, as Microsoft is likely to tout this persistence as a key feature of its platform.
Moreover, with nearly 100 million PlayStation 4 consoles in the wild, this decision has a far-wider impact than most others.