Migrating a local PS4 profile to PS5, preserving trophies and save games

Question

I just bought my PS5 and still own the old PS4. While I successfully transferred games for my PSN profile, I thought data transfer copied everything from the old console to the new.

The point is that my friend created a profile on the PS4, played Detroit and earned some progress. I would like them to continue playing on the new console and explore alternate endings, retaining trophies if possible, before I sell the PS4 device.

The account is local, has no PSN account.

While I think I could ask them to sign up to PSN for free and log in from the PS5, I want to ask if it's possible to transfer the entire local profile from PS4 to PS5.

I still own both consoles that are on the same LAN. When I transferred data initially, I didn't uncheck anything. When retrying, that account is not listed.

Answer 1

For your friend, yes they will need to make a PSN account to try the transfer, but I'm not sure if the save game will transfer over on that specific game. I've not heard of just doing a local migration without PSN.

To expand on this for others that may end up on this question in general.

You'll need to log into the PSN network on the PS4 and sync your profile. If you have PSN+ you can then sync supported saves to the cloud as well. On the PS5, sign in and and your trophies will be available to your profile and you can download the cloud saves for PS4 games you run on the PS5 (for instance PixelJunk Shooter will not only allow you to share your save data between PS4 and PS5, but also the PSVita).

PS5 native versions of the PS4 games will as a rule not be able to see or use the PS4 save file, but there may be exceptions if the developer specifically accounted for it. For instance, if you get a trophy in Destiny 2 on the PS4, then boot the PS5 version the trophy will automatically pop (this works visa-versa as well).