Sony Changes Upgrade Policy for First-Party PlayStation Games

Sony has come under a lot of fire since Horizon: Forbidden West pre-orders went up, for the way they are handling game upgrades from the PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5. Over the years PlayStation and Xbox have had their fair share of differences, but perhaps none so strongly at heads as the way the two companies handle last-gen to current-gen upgrades. While Xbox has its Smart Delivery program, Sony has created a series of if-then formulas that essentially have players rebuying a game to own it on a next-gen system.

Players got very vocal in protesting the crazy upgrade plan with Horizon: Forbidden West, which made it so only those who get the most expensive of the editions for the game would get both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions. Only those who purchased the Digital Deluxe, Collector’s Edition, or Regalla Edition of Horizon: Forbidden West would have what is called Dual Entitlement of the game.

Jim Ryan, President & CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, took to the PlayStation Blog to clarify some new upgrade options to Horizon: Forbidden West and all future PlayStation first-party games moving forward. To start off, players who purchase Horizon: Forbidden West on the PlayStation 4 can upgrade to the PlayStation 5 version for free. On top of this, all future PlayStation first-party cross-gen games from now, with God of War: Ragnarok and Gran Turismo 7 being two named examples, will have a $10 digital upgrade option to the PS5 as long as you own the titles digitally or physically on the PS4.

In that same PlayStation Blog post, it is reiterated that PlayStation last year had made the promise to have all PlayStation 5 launch window games will receive free upgrades to next-gen and it seems that after the delay of Horizon from the initial timeframe, such free upgrades were scraped. That is until now. It took a lot of noise to get this policy turnaround, but it’s good that it finally happened. Currently, PlayStation 4 games are $60 and PlayStation 5 games are $70, which means that this new upgrade plan essentially lets you pay the difference in prices to get the next-gen version of the game.