Update: Sony, in a statement to Polygon, says all PS4 forward comparability patches will be free, clearing up earlier reports to the contrary. Original story is below.
Alongside the announcement of the PlayStation 4 Pro, Sony also announced that many already-released third-party and first-party games for PS4 would become "forward compatible" for the PS4 Pro via patches adding 4K and/or HDR support. However, what Sony failed to mention at the company's press event was that those forward compatibility patches might not be free.
According to Japanese gaming website Game Impress Watch (translated by Kotaku), executive vice president at Sony Interactive Entertainment Masayasu Ito said, "it will be different for each title" when it comes to the issue of paid or free updates for forward compatible games. When asked to clarify whether or not that would be the case for Sony's own first-party titles, Ito again responded by saying, "I think it will vary for each one of our titles."
As of now, two previously-released first-party games are officially set to support the PS4 Pro at launch: Naughty Dog's Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and Sucker Punch's Infamous: Second Son. All first-party Sony games coming in 2017 or later will support PS4 Pro. Third-party games released or releasing this year set to support PS4 Pro include Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and The Elder Scrolls Online. Thus far, Bethesda is the only publisher to confirm that the 4K patch for Elder Scrolls Online will be free.
It would certainly be odd for any of the patches to cost money, even more so for Sony's first-party titles. Updates for games improving performance, visuals and gameplay are released all the time nowadays for free. With that in mind, it's easy to see how charging for the PS4 Pro visual improvement patches might not go over so well.
Sony seems to be losing some of its iron grip on the current console market. Xbox One, with the arrival of the Xbox One S, outsold PS4 for the second month in a row in August, and Bethesda recently revealed that mods won't be arriving for Fallout 4 or Skyrim: Remastered on Sony's console due to Sony's failure to cooperate. Combine that with the company possibly charging customers for performance patches for its latest console, and the current industry leader looks like it's stumbled into a hole that, so far, only keeps getting deeper.
