Doom Eternal's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S upgrade won't be available at console launches

The upgraded version of id Sofware's bloody shooter Doom Eternal won't be available for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as the new consoles launch.

In a blog post, publisher Bethesda said that it doesn't have a time frame for these enhanced versions of the FPS as of yet, but promised that it will be one of the first of its games to receive an upgrade. The company also pointed out that you can play Doom Eternal on your new machines via backwards compatibility.

The forthcoming upgrades will be applied to both the physical and digital versions of the shooter, but Bethesda warned that if you own a boxed copy of Doom Eternal and are upgrading to a digital-only next-gen machine, you won't be able to upgrade the game. You also can't claim this update if you own the shooter on a Sony machine and buy one of Microsoft's new consoles and vice versa.

On Xbox consoles, the enhanced version of Doom Eternal will be released via Microsoft's Smart Delivery system, while on Sony's machines it will be applied via a download from the PlayStation Store. These upgrades are going to be entirely free-of-charge, too.

Doom Eternal launched in March of this year – hilariously, on the same day as Animal Crossing: New Horizons – just before the UK was plunged into its first coronavirus lockdown. In our review, we said that the game boasted cathartic combat, but said the platforming segments were lacking.

During the title's opening weekend, Bethesda said that Doom Eternal had smashed launch sales for the long-running shooter franchise. Over on Steam, the game saw over 100,000 concurrent players in its launch week, almost twice as high as its predecessor's record.

Bethesda announced in August that some of its titles – including Doom Eternal – were going to receive next-gen upgrades for free. At the time, the publisher promised that it would be sharing details about when these will be released and what they would entail in the near future, but as of yet this information has not emerged.

Doom Eternal is one of many games receiving free upgrades for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. In June, CD Projekt said that it is working on a "robust" set of tweaks for Cyberpunk 2077 on these new machines, while Marvel's Avengers, FIFA 21 and Borderlands 3 are going to receive upgrades, too.