Through both Completionator and my own Excel sheet, I've been tracking my game collection as it's grown. Now will the new generation of games, both Sony and Microsoft, along with third-party publishers, are giving free upgrades to the next-gen versions of some games.

How would you personally track this? Say for example you get both consoles this month. For Christmas, you get PS4/XB1 game, which comes with a free upgrade to the next-gen versions. How do you track it?

I had a similar conundrum with ps+ games when they were multi-platform, say a game that was usable on ps3+ps4+vita. I was doing one entry per platform, but then marking the two "lesser" versions (ps3/vita) as hidden in my collection to avoid being spammed when browsing and because I was likely to only play it on ps4 any way.

That's a good point. I think it's even harder for Xbox because they've committed to games being forwards and backwards compatible for at least the next year or two. PS5 is going to probably be slightly easier to define, but I think Xbox is going to cause more issues.

Take Cyberpunk 2077 for instance: if you buy it when it comes out in December as an 'Xbox' game, it's playable on both consoles but isn't optimised for Series X|S yet. Which to my logic makes it an Xbox One game.

However, if you buy the game after the optimised version is out, you can immediately play the Series X|S optimised version of the game, so it's technically an XSX|S game...maybe? Although it can also still be played on the last-gen hardware.

The logic with my strategy from the ps3/ps4/vita thing was "I have this game license. What platforms do I own that I can play it on?" was meant so that if I wanted to filter my collection to say, just my vita, I would see every possible game I could play on there, even if the odds were unlikely that I would in some cases where I'd rather play on ps4. It was about tracking what all my potential options were for completeness sake.

Now, with the backwards compatible thing on both systems and using my previous logic, I'd have to update every single ps4 game to have a matching ps5 entry. Same goes with the various generations of xbox games, which would get even uglier due to multiple generations of backwards compatibility. That's way overkill.

I think I'd restrict the double-dipping on collection entries to cross-gen titles that are explicitly advertised as such if completeness is really important for tracking. Otherwise, list them as either purely last gen, or purely current gen.

Had this issue today adding Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I decided to add it as Series X rather than Xbox One based on the packaging of the game. The packaging has the X|S Optimized listed on it. Which then begs to ask, the Xbox One X isn't a separate platform. Would I mark all games that state Enhanced for X on the package under that platform? So confusing.

For games i already own that get the X|S optimization, I think I'll be adding a new entry for them under Series X, otherwise they are just under Xbox One. For any new game I get, if it has the X|S optimization, it will only get filed under Series X, otherwise it's under Xbox One. For example when I get Cyberpunk next week, it will be filed as an Xbox One game, but my playthrough will be for Xbox Series X.

I think this way makes sense anyways lol. It might be an evolving thing.