Sony Will No Longer Offer Free Next-Gen Upgrades For Its First-Party Games

Good news: You won’t have to pay Sony extra money to upgrade your PS4 copy of Horizon Forbidden West to a PS5 version. Bad news: Sony ain’t offering free upgrades any more after this.

Earlier this week, Sony revealed the confusing details surrounding how to pre-order Horizon Forbidden West, including nine different versions of the game. Only some more expensive variants included both the option to play on PS4 and PS5. None offered free or even a paid upgrade path from the basic PS4 version to the fancy PS5 edition. This was odd, because in the past Sony had promised that these kinds of upgrades would be free.

Now, after a lot of online pushback and criticism, Sony has reversed course and will offer a free upgrade path for the Horizon sequel. But that won’t be how things work moving forward as Sony also confirmed that it will no longer offer free next-gen upgrades after this. Instead, you’ll have to pay $10 to upgrade digital copies of future PlayStation exclusives.

Over on the official PlayStation Blog post announcing the nine versions of Horizon Forbidden West, a new update was added last night. In this update, Jim Ryan—President & CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment—explained how the company had “missed the mark” with how it handled the rollout of pre-orders for Forbidden West. Ryan also explained that everyone who buys the open-world sequel on PS4 will now get the PS5 version for free.

Read the full article Kotaku