It turns out Sony won’t be charging PS4 Pro players for 4K upgrade patches

By Danny Cowan Published September 12, 2016

Kotaku recently confirmed with a Sony representative that the company has no plans to charge customers for 4K/HDR upgrade patches despite comments made by one of its executives, Masayasu Ito. Previously, Ito indicated to Japanese-based Game Watch that customers may have to pay Sony to upgrade existing first-party PlayStation 4 games to 4K and HDR through patches on the PlayStation 4 Pro. That also included vanilla PlayStation 4 owners who will soon receive new firmware that supports HDR-capable displays.

Ito previously told Game Watch that some of Sony’s own published games will feature a surcharge for upgraded PlayStation 4 Pro content, while other titles will be upgraded for free. He also indicated that third-party publishers may charge for the visual upgrades too, depending on the game and the publisher.

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Noting that fees for PlayStation 4 Pro-specific upgrades “will depend on the thinking of each licensee,” Ito raised new concerns over content that many believed would be free. In addition to paying a suggested retail price of $400 for upgraded hardware, PlayStation 4 Pro owners may be required to pay for graphical upgrades across individual game titles in order to get the most out of their investment.

Revealed earlier this week, the PlayStation 4 Pro is an upgraded version of Sony’s PlayStation 4 gaming console. Compared to previously issued PlayStation 4 hardware, the PS4 Pro features a faster GPU and improved processing power. The console additionally offers support for high-dynamic range color and 4K resolution, though Sony declined to include a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray drive as part of the package.

Sony later announced that some games – including Rise of the Tomb Raider and Call of Duty: Black Ops III – will offer faster framerates when played on PlayStation 4 Pro hardware. Multiple publishers assured that such performance improvements will not give players an advantage in a multiplayer context, however.

During this week’s interview with Game Watch, Ito stated that all Sony-published games going forward will offer improved visuals on PlayStation 4 Pro hardware. Some games will be updated for free, while others will require players to pay a fee for forthcoming software patches. Ito did not reveal which games specifically will carry the additional fee.

The PlayStation 4 Pro console arrives at retail on November 10 while the firmware update adding HDR support to the original PlayStation 4 arrives next week.

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