Launching new features across multiple hardware generations is a challenge for any technology company. As innovation accelerates, the gap between what your newest systems can do and what your existing platforms were designed for keeps widening.
This challenge is especially visible in consumer technology, where products are built to last and customers expect reliability over time. I experienced this firsthand while launching the PlayStation’s Family app, a parental control platform that helps parents monitor and manage their children’s gaming activity.
As a father of five-year-old twins, the project carried personal meaning for me. It was about building something that helps families connect around games safely and responsibly.
Data revealed that nearly half of all children’s accounts connected through the app were still active on PlayStation 4 (PS4), a console built on a very different architecture from the PlayStation 5 (PS5).
Working on a Consumer-First Timeline
It’s easy to assume that newer products will quickly dominate. But consumer technology doesn’t move on corporate timelines. In the past, each console generation ran on its own infrastructure because every platform introduced new APIs, data formats, and performance assumptions that weren’t backward-compatible.
Maintaining separate stacks was often faster than refactoring shared systems, but it came at the cost of doubling compute usage, increasing complexity, and making every outage harder to diagnose.
Our team is responsible for tracking cumulative gameplay hours since purchase on PS5, while another team managed a similar service for PS4. For the PS Family app, we needed to extend both systems to provide daily and per-title breakdowns across generations.
At first, the change seemed straightforward, but in practice the real challenge was coordinating two separate infrastructures and maintaining consistency without doubling operational effort or complexity.
The Pattern That Broke the Deadlock
The breakthrough came when we reframed the problem. Instead of modifying multiple systems, could we build a single new layer that spoke both architectures’ languages? Apache Flink provided the answer. Known for real-time stream processing, it offered a way to unify event data across platforms without rewriting existing systems.
We built a streaming layer that consumed telemetry events from both PS4 and PS5 Kafka topics, enriched them in real time for privacy, and produced a unified view of gameplay activity.
The legacy and current systems continued operating exactly as they were, now connected through one cohesive pipeline.
The results were transformative:
One codebase instead of multiple systems
A single deployment pipeline
Lower operational risk
Faster delivery compared with re-engineering older infrastructure
We launched with full support for both generations on day one, without compromise or deferrals.
What Happens Next
Once the streaming foundation was in place, new opportunities emerged. Players began requesting access to their own daily gameplay summaries, a feature originally designed for parents.
When I presented this approach at Flink Forward Barcelona, organised by Ververica, the original creators of Apache Flink, the positive response confirmed what we’d learned: the same architecture that enabled parental insights now supports player self-awareness and healthier gaming patterns.
We’re now exploring additional applications, including personalized analytics and AI-driven behavioral insights. The system that powers daily play breakdowns could just as easily uncover broader trends, such as evolving content preferences or shifts in engagement.
The architecture didn’t just solve a compatibility issue—it opened the door to entirely new experiences.
Why This Matters
Families who purchased a PS4 console years ago still enjoy their favorite titles today. Streaming architectures create translation layers instead of duplicate systems, bridging the gap between generations. Whether in connected devices that stay in the field for years or enterprise platforms supporting long-lived deployments, the principle is the same.
The technology to connect old and new already exists. Companies don’t have to choose between innovation and loyalty. Sometimes, the smartest move is to build systems that can speak the language of multiple generations, honoring both progress and the people who made it possible.
