Horizon Forbidden West will be Sony’s latest game with a free upgrade from PS4 to PS5

Just before the weekend, Sony unveiled the launch plans for Horizon Forbidden West, which will be released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 over the New Year. Many then noticed that there was no upgrade plan for PlayStation 5 for those who wanted to buy the PlayStation 4 version, which resulted in harsh criticism from several teams.

On Sunday, Sony took a U-turn. In a update to the original PlayStation Blog post Top executive Jim Ryan now says they’ll offer the option to upgrade from PlayStation 4 to the PlayStation 5 version of the game.

– Last year, we committed to delivering free upgrades between generations of our launch titles, which then included Horizon Forbidden West. Although the deep impact of the pandemic on development pushed Forbidden West out of the launch window we originally planned, we want to honor this offer: Players who purchase Horizon Forbidden West on PlayStation 4 will be able to upgrade to the PlayStation 5 version for free, Ryan writes in the update.

Will be the latest with a free upgrade from Sony

In the same update, Ryan emphasizes a point they have hinted at in the past: They will start charging to upgrade the PlayStation 4 version of upcoming games after the launch plans are honored. Thus, Horizon Forbidden West will be the last game to have this offer, and it will cost a small hundred bucks to upgrade upcoming titles.

– I also want to confirm today that in the future, PlayStation’s in-house developed games that are launched on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 will have the opportunity to be upgraded from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5 for 10 dollars. This will apply to the next God of War game and Gran Turismo 7, as well as all other exclusive cross-generation games for PS4 and PS5 published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Ryan points out.

When it comes to games from other publishers, it will probably be handled individually in each individual case.

Sony’s direction further stands in stark contrast to the Xbox’s plan to give everyone access to all versions, as long as you’ve purchased one of them. If you own a game on Xbox One, you get the Xbox Series X / S update for free, and you will also be able to play the game on PC. This again applies to all games released and developed by Xbox Game Studios, while third party publishers and developers handle this on an individual basis.

Also read: Do you know how much it costs to build a PC with PlayStation 5 performance? We checked »

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