P.T. Owners Are Sitting On A Gold Mine

P.T. is the gift that keeps on giving, only to be taken away. When the playable teaser was first released, audiences were excited because it was supposed to be the prelude to a new Silent Hill chapter. It would be helmed by Hideo Kojima, Guillermo del Toro, and Junji Ito, with Norman Reedus starring as the protagonist. But after Konami and Kojima split, P.T. was deleted from the PlayStation store, transforming consoles with the game into valuable commodities. P.T. is still a gold mine of secrets and inspiration, and PlayStation 4s with playable copies on their storage are about to become even more valuable.

Recently, Konami crushed the dreams of P.T. fans and game preservation enthusiasts alike by announcing P.T. wouldn't be playable on the PlayStation 5. This means that PS4s with the game already installed are literally the only way to play it. If you missed out on P.T. when it was originally released and want to experience one of the scariest games of the decade, you have no choice but to shell out for a console with a valuable installed copy. This is easier said than done, however, because prices for PS4s containing P.T. vary wildly on sites like eBay, going as high as $1,000. As time goes on, those costs are probably only going to increase.

However, for a short time, the PS5 didn't march in step with Konami's designs. According to Polygon, early reviewers could transfer P.T. onto the console. On Oct. 24, Polygon news editor Michael McWhertor tested his console's backwards compatibility with P.T., and it worked flawlessly. However, that all came crashing down a few days later when the game refused to boot up, displaying the message "This PS4 game isn't payable on PS5." After a mandatory factory reset, McWhertor couldn't even download the title. When McWhertor contacted Sony about the situation, he was told it "was a publisher decision."

While it is unclear why P.T. was temporarily playable on the PS5, experiences like McWhertor's heralded the final nail in the P.T. PS5 coffin. While plenty of gamers can still experience the horror of P.T. on their PS4s, they are the lucky ones. At this point, nobody else can play the game. And, thanks to Konami's apparent disregard for game preservation, they will control the P.T. market. If you want to play the game, you will have to meet the prices set by the sellers.