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PlayStation (Games) The Almighty Buck Games

Sony Is Nickel-and-Diming PS5 Owners On Upgrades For Games They Already Own (businessinsider.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the tisk-tisk dept.
According to Insider, Sony is charging a $10 upgrade fee to bring cross-generational games from a PS4 to a PS5. From the report: When new game consoles launch nowadays, a variety of games on that new console are also available on the previous generation of consoles. The next major PlayStation 5 exclusive game, for instance, is also headed to the PlayStation 4: "Horizon Forbidden West" launches in early 2022, and millions of players will get it on the last generation console. [..] Unfortunately, when PlayStation 4 owners do finally find and purchase a PlayStation 5, those cross-generational games don't automatically make the leap with them. Instead, Sony intends to charge $10 apiece for that upgrade -- and that's only after fans criticized Sony for an even stranger policy.

"Thursday was to be a celebration of 'Horizon Forbidden West' and the amazing team at Guerrilla working to deliver it on February 18, 2022," PlayStation leader Jim Ryan said in an update on a Sony blog post earlier this month. "However, it's abundantly clear that the offerings we confirmed in our pre-order kickoff missed the mark." Ryan was referring to a previously announced pre-order announcement for "Horizon Forbidden West" that revealed the only way to get both the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game was to order an $80 "digital deluxe" edition -- a $20 increase over the base level $60 price of a PS4 video game.

Sony had previously announced that any PlayStation 5 games in the "launch window" would only need to be purchased on one console to own both the PS4 and PS5 versions. "Horizon Forbidden West" has been delayed repeatedly, which pushed it out of the ambiguous "launch window" Sony set for the PlayStation 5 (which launched in November 2020). When PlayStation fans cited this, Sony caved. Moreover, Ryan laid out a clear upgrade path for the future -- albeit one that's still open to scrutiny. "Moving forward, PlayStation first-party exclusive cross-gen titles (newly releasing on PS4 & PS5) -- both digital and physical -- will offer a $10 USD digital upgrade option from PS4 to PS5," Ryan said. "This will apply to the next 'God of War' and 'Gran Turismo 7,' and any other exclusive cross-gen PS4 & PS5 title published by Sony Interactive Entertainment." Microsoft's policy, on the other hand, states that if you owned a game on a previous Xbox console, you own it on the current consoles. If there's a newer version of that game for your newer console, that's the version you get when you buy and download the game.
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Sony Is Nickel-and-Diming PS5 Owners On Upgrades For Games They Already Own More

Sony Is Nickel-and-Diming PS5 Owners On Upgrades For Games They Already Own

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  • Simple fix (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sidekick2 ( 852519 ) on Monday September 13, 2021 @07:04PM (#61793785)
    Don't buy a PS5. Teaches Sony a lesson.

    • Re:Simple fix (Score:5, Funny)

      by Synonymous Cowered ( 6159202 ) on Monday September 13, 2021 @07:33PM (#61793843)

      Don't buy a PS5. Teaches Sony a lesson.

      Yeah, but then you don't get even more realistic rippled water reflections. Who can possibly play a game without that?

    • I *CAN'T* buy a PS5. It's turning out to be an urban legend.You hear about them, but there is no real evidence that they exist.

      • I *CAN'T* buy a PS5.

        If you really want one, you can probably get one inside a month if you pay attention to a few twitter feeds that just announce restocks... (just search for PS5 restock or Xbox restock).

        I actually had a chance even earlier but missed an email from Sony PS Direct giving me the opportunity to buy a PS5, so that is one route as well if you sign up for the mailing list there.

        Also some of the anti-bot technology has actually gotten better. I managed to order a PS5 from WalMart in part becaus

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Also some of the anti-bot technology has actually gotten better. I managed to order a PS5 from WalMart in part because of what I thought was a clever way they released the systems - not all at once, but in several smaller waves spaced every ten minutes with a few "click to prove you are a human" box delay prompts in the way to actually adding a PS5 to the cart. After just a wave or two I was able to add to a cart, and the small batches released meant the ordering system didn't collapse with too many people

  • Are there any games that anyone recommends for the Playstation? Or for the X-box, for that matter.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by binarylarry ( 1338699 )

      Xbox and PlayStation are for simps that can’t afford a gaming PC.

      For consoles, Switch and hopefully SteamDeck are where it’s at.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        Xbox and PlayStation are for simps that can’t afford a gaming PC.

        And for those of us with better things to do than sit in our mom's basement and play on our $2,000 gaming PC that will be outdated next year. What? Your mom buy you a 'puter for Christmas? Or are you just mad that you can't buy an XBox that has RGB LEDs on the RAM?

        • I bought a GTX 970 in 2014. Runs everything even today. The only problem is that it might die of old age and over use and a new gfx is hard to get buy these days, but still easier to get a PS5.

          Consoles have a chilled out effect. Due to consistent marketing, a console sitting next to your TV looks cool while a dedicated pc which boots into steam big picture mode is uncool. That's the only difference. "nerd"

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Pascoea ( 968200 )
            I was just being snarky (apparently the Mods didn't appreciate it) I've spent way too many hours in front of one of the many gaming computers I've built over the years. I've also spent way too many hours on the various consoles. They each have their place. My only reason to trend toward consoles is the fact that I already spend 8-10 hours a day in a computer chair, plopping on the couch after work is much more my speed lately. I certainly COULD build another PC to serve that same purpose, but why bothe

            • Got it. Fair enough. I myself would love to play over PS5. Uncharted was simply mind blowing fun on my roommate's PS4. But in my country steam prices games based on purchasing power parity and no other store does that, and I am kind of a cheapskate... :)

          • I bought a GTX 970 in 2014. Runs everything even today.

            On low detail quality. LTT, JayzTwoCents and Hardware Unboxed have all done articles about gaming on old GPUs and at best you're getting 1080p and low to medium detail on any recent title if you want 60FPS. And forget running COD Warzone in 4K 120FPS like my PS5 and XBSX can.

      • Actually I just want recommendations on good games to play.

      • Switch is all the same problems as the other consoles.
        Expensive given the lack of a game library.
        The hardware isn't helping either. BotW was a pretty game that always ran into framerate stutters for a game running 30 FPS.

    • Depends. Have some already been identified to allow jailbreaking with doctored savegames?

    • The Yakuza series and Judgement.

    • For PlayStation
      FF 7,8,9. Parasite Eve. Spyro the Dragon. Crash Bandicoot. Crash Team Racing. Toomba. Legend of Legaia. Einhänder

      For Xbox
      KoTOR. Halo. Hunter: The Reckoning

  • Xbox is Superior to PS5 in every way. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bit trollent ( 824666 ) on Monday September 13, 2021 @07:15PM (#61793809) Homepage

    Too bad the only people who can buy xboxes are resellers.

    Oh well... hardly have any time for gaming these days anyway, and PC gaming roxors my soxors.

    There is an awesome helicopter combat game on xbox. I play with my sweet joystick and throttle...

    MS Flight Simulator is sweet too. I can fly between NYC skyscrapers with collision detection telling me if I'm as good a pilot as I think I am.

    Still rocking an older i7, an Nvidia GTX 1080, and still maxing out most games' graphics settings..

    • Well... except for the lack of Gran Turismo... and Persona 5... and God of War... and Ghost of Tsushima... and Death Stranding... and Spider-Man... and Wolverine. But sure, superior in every way.

    • Flight Sim is kinda neat, but, well, it's more a PC gamer thing. And Microsoft isn't really making much else. Meanwhile Sony's got God of War, the Spiderman games, and a Wolverine game. If you're an old school console gamer you're kinda stuck with a PS5.

      • Microsoft isn't really making much else.

        Microsoft themselves aren't, but they own a few studios that are. 343, Bethesda/ID, Arkane, Double Fine, Obsidian, and several others.

    • While MS simulator does seem pretty awesome, and I do enjoy a good helicopter combat game... why couldn't I just play those on a PC instead of a very hard to acquire Xbox One X?

      The thing is for me, The PS series just get way more unique original games. Stuff like Ratchet & Clank which I think is the absolute pinnacle of a great platforming game. And Horizon Forbidden West, though at least that will eventually be on the PC like the original game...

      Playstation just has super strong first parties while e

    • Still rocking an older i7, an Nvidia GTX 1080, and still maxing out most games' graphics settings..

      Something that is more than fine when playing with most current games. You're competing against consoles released 8 years ago. The story will change dramatically for next gen titles. Don't expect your GTX1080 to even remotely work on maxed out settings for a console generation where raytracing is the norm. ... Actually I suspect you may find yourself needing Windows 11 and Microsoft's Direct Storage API as well to even support features of the PS5.

      Computers were always held back by consoles. It's like develo

  • At the sort of macro level, Sony got a little full of themselves again like they did after the PS2, and seems to think that customers will just take whatever abuse they dish out and ask for more. Microsoft, on the other hand, was clearly taking notes last generation and clearly did a pretty brutal post-mortem to figure out what they did wrong, most of which they have addressed this time around.

    Sure it's more expensive to make games for the PS5, the reasons for which is a whole other can of worms I won't get

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarenN ( 411219 )

      Nah, this will be a storm in a teacup style thing. It's has only really come up because of shortage of PS5 consoles, so a goodly number of people who want the PS5 are still on the PS4. If you think about it, Sony could have avoided this by having the studios charging PS5 prices for all games and making them available on both platforms. This avoids the bad press but then all games are $10 more expensive.

      Their solution is better for people, but it feels worse. If you want the PS4 version, you pay the PS4 pric

  • Both Sony and Microsoft could have taken a more consumer friendly approach to rolling out their next gen consoles during a pandemic and this wouldn't be an issue. But nope, they allowed scalpers and hoarders to suck up all the supply to resell at highly inflated rates. In the end this is going to kill any of the next gen games coming out in the next year or two.

  • I mean, you already pay a Sony tax on the game and pay 70 instead of 50 bucks for it. After buying a system that already can't do anything but play the games that Sony deems ok for you to play. Then you pay extra to play online (or is that only with MS the case?). And then you pay again to keep playing your games when you upgrade to the next model.

    Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'll stick with my PC.

    • you can play your PS4 games on a PS5 just fine. the paid upgrades is for better PS5 quality graphics and other stuff that required new dev work

      • I do that by plugging new hardware into my machine and choosing a better graphics setting now that I can run it smoothly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by deek ( 22697 )

          That new graphics card you just bought for your PC gaming rig, it costs the same amount or even more than a whole game console.
          Console games have a fixed hardware target, so developers have more ability to optimise code.
          With new generation consoles, developers can now create code specifically taking advantage of PCIE4 SSD speeds.
          No need to worry about driver versions, OS updates that crash your PC, online opponents that cheat with hacks.
          There are games on a console that just aren't available for PC. Some r

          • Well, if you factor in the premium on the price tag of games, usually to the tune of 20-30 bucks a game, not counting DLCs or other "mandatory" tidbits you have to pay for, I'm not so sure that a gaming PC is so much more pricey than a console with a bunch of games. It's a different matter if all you want to do with the console is to mod and unlock it to have cheap hardware, but that's usually against the interest of their makers, after all the console is usually cross-financed with the premium on games, mu

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by deek ( 22697 )

              True, there is a premium on the price of console games. Though if you're happy to wait, the price goes down considerably with time. You'd be surprised with how competitive console game prices eventually are. Especially physical copies.

              Optimisation will always be better on a console. Always. It's inherent in the fact that there is one hardware specification. Plus, with custom hardware on new gen consoles designed to speed up IO specifically for gaming purposes, something that is not available on the PC

        • That works until you hit the limit of the game engine or textures the designers put into the game.

          It's like running the original Donkey Kong on a 4K monitor. Those baseball card sized blocks look great at 4K.

          • On a console, I guess this would mean I have to buy the game again, just with this year's year number attached.

            I, I just dig through the web for some replacement textures. If it's a halfway popular game, someone has created a mod for it.

        • I do that by plugging new hardware into my machine and choosing a better graphics setting now that I can run it smoothly.

          You won't going forward. There's no setting that changes level designs that cope with new hardware. Someone actually needs to program that in.

          At some point the developer needs to take into account what your hardware can do and put effort in. And that's precisely the point here, older PS4 games are effectively being remastered, or newer PS5 games are effectively being ... err... demastered? Either way this isn't a case of switch graphics from high to ultra, there is very real design effort which needs to go

  • SolidWorks charges $1000s a year for upgrades I don't give a shit about

  • Realistically this is best (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday September 13, 2021 @09:09PM (#61794067)

    From the customer standpoint, at first yeah it seems better that everyone on Xbox is "free".

    But if you really think about it, Sony's approach is way heather if what you want is better games, because the game companies will actually get paid to do a better job. You get a much better PS5 port if the company knows there might be some significant revenue in it, vs. just re-rendering the textures on an Xbox X version of a game and calling it a day.

    Over the course of a few years I think you'll find that the PS5 has more truly next-gen games than does the Xbox because there's not really any incentive to build many Xbox games that do anything except target the lowest common denominator.

    • good point that is overlooked by knee-jerk reflex responders

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by teg ( 97890 )

      From the customer standpoint, at first yeah it seems better that everyone on Xbox is "free".

      But if you really think about it, Sony's approach is way heather if what you want is better games, because the game companies will actually get paid to do a better job. You get a much better PS5 port if the company knows there might be some significant revenue in it, vs. just re-rendering the textures on an Xbox X version of a game and calling it a day.

      Over the course of a few years I think you'll find that the PS5 has more truly next-gen games than does the Xbox because there's not really any incentive to build many Xbox games that do anything except target the lowest common denominator.

      I really doubt that. The bulk of the costs are cross platform and split across all consoles and PC - art assets, acting, writing, game logic etc. Even some of the rest is usually cross platform from an external vendor - game engines and libraries. Risking your sales of your large, expensive project on a major platform for a small fraction of the cost is unlikely.

      As such, the games are probably going to have the highest potential (but adjustable) on a PC - this determines the upper bounds of the game capabil

      • You were right for previous generations. But you're not right for the next generation. Next gen consoles have departed from the model of the past. They no longer offer just more power, but features and APIs that affect the core of game design.

        e.g. You can target the PS5. Stream your assets in real time. No loading screens, no transitions areas. Throw lights in where you want, tick the global illumination button and call it a day. It just works.

        Or you can target the PS5 and PS4. Now you need to consider fund

    • Thats not really the point, cross platform games usually are done the cheapest way possible so they gather usually to the lowest platform they have to target... given the xbox is not too much different than the sony console, you will get pretty much the same visuals on the xbox as on the ps5 for such games, but cheaper unless they do not follow sonys route of the 10 bucks price hike.
      PC again is the cheapest platform, the PS5 the most expensive one atm.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

      Patently false. Happy customers are loyal customers. If I already have a PS4, and the game is coming to both PS4 and 5, then what is my incentive to even spend the money on the new console, especially if I have to give them another $10 times the number of games I play? Literally zero incentive. I buy a game once on PC and I can basically play it forever, regardless of how much I upgrade the hardware. Besides, you think the devs are getting a cut of that $10 upgrade fee? Extremely unlikely.

      It. Is. A. Scam.

      • If I already have a PS4, and the game is coming to both PS4 and 5, then what is my incentive to even spend the money on the new console

        That's any point - there is incentive because the PS5 version will be pretty well improved, because they will make money for the improvements. It means actually better, not just higher res, graphics. It means supporting the new controller better.

        Meanwhile you have peel posting on Slashdot for this very story saying, I have an Xbox One, why get a One X? Because it will pl

    • The best solution is one that ensures that the developers get an honest day's pay for handling upgrades, while customers pay roughly the cost of the upgrade without any margins. I'm guessing that 10$ is roughly 1/4 to 1/6 the cost of the original game. That sounds a bit steep for an upgrade considering how much effort went into the original product. I suspect sony is taking a not insignificant margin.
    • That's all basically bullshit. It would have been true in the past but not any time since games like Fortnite became popular. MS pays the devs plenty of money and nowadays the real money isn't in what a game developer gets for the game, it's what they get for the DLC which is why all the major studies have free to play games all of which are high quality. And what is going to bring in more revenue from DLC than having your games free on a subscription platform like Game Pass? For the more minor devs they're

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stikves ( 127823 )

      The counter-argument is the PC.

      I saw many of my games getting free upgrades (like Skyrim Special Edition), when there was a new version. It cost nothing to the companies, except for the good free publicity.

      And games are usually future proof anyway. Remember, it took 10+ years to finally run Crisis at ultra settings. So, there is no reason not to prepare the games for PS-6 (or whatever), and release it on PS5 and PS4. When the actual PS6 comes along, people get a free upgrade. New players can still pay full

      • Those are some pretty good points, but I think console software being much more tailored to the specifics of the platform makes it harder to make a good upgraded version than it does on a PC, at least if you programmed the game to run really well on a specific platform in the first place... as you say PC games are programmed basically targeting hardware they know will eventually come, so they just have a longer shelf life anyway.

        Also the PS5 controller can be a more specialized upgrade than most PC control

  • it's not the 1st time publishers have done this. They don't want you going out and buying a used copy off ebay for $5 bucks and getting a next gen experience. This way they at least get $10 bucks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by teg ( 97890 )

      it's not the 1st time publishers have done this. They don't want you going out and buying a used copy off ebay for $5 bucks and getting a next gen experience. This way they at least get $10 bucks.

      That's probably a rounding error in their calculations... what they want is to raise the default price from $60 to $70 for every normal priced game. By doing this on the PS5 version, this will be the new default as PS4 eventually is phased out and sales drop.When they want to have different price points for PS4 and PS5 versions, having an upgrade fee follows naturally - if not, I'd just buy the PS4 version.

      The segment of "bought a physical PS4 version" (as opposed to a physical PS5 version or a digital PS4

  • Their next generation price hike... They charge 10 bucks more for original titles than in the last gen. Games here have now reached the 80 Euros price point. So much for online buys being cheaper because they dont have any middle men anymore. I have revered back to discs which I buy second hand they still are cheap. Thank god I did not went for the discless version of the PS5

  • So when you upgrade your hardware, the game upgrade with them.
  • They already rescinded this policy for Horizon Forbidden West and are going to allow people that own it on the PS4 to upgrade to the PS5 without buying the full game.

    Separate PS4 and PS5 versions at near full price was always nonsensical.

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