PlayStation CEO nixes free cross-gen PS5 upgrades for good

Enlarge / Sony's new standardized cross-gen upgrade cost will be $10 for all first-party games slated to release on both PS4 and PS5. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | PlayStation)

Sony announced last week that players will be able to upgrade any version of Horizon Forbidden West from the PlayStation 4 to the PlayStation 5 for free-but that game is the last first-party release that will include this option.

In a September 4 post on PlayStation.Blog, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan confirmed that every new first-party, cross-generation release in the future will offer players a paid current-gen upgrade path option for $10. This list includes the next God of War, Gran Turismo 7, and any other Sony-published games slated to appear on both systems, only exempting Horizon Forbidden West.

Now it will cost you

The publisher reversed course on the Forbidden West preorder plans it announced two days earlier because it had offered no way, paid or otherwise, for players to upgrade the game's bare-bones PS4 editions to current-gen. Instead, the convoluted pricing structure required anyone interested in owning Horizon Forbidden West on both consoles to choose from multiple high-cost deluxe editions, a move that sparked significant backlash from fans.

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