Sony says they won’t ask users to pay for patches on the PlayStation 4 Pro, despite some vague comments made by an executive this morning. “We will not charge consumers for patches,” a Sony representative said in an e-mail to Kotaku today.
UPDATE - 12:22pm: We’ve changed the headline and opening of this story following clarification from Sony on the question of paying for patches. Original story follows:
The PS4 Pro is making this new era of complicated gaming even more so.
As announced earlier this week, the new PlayStation iteration supports 4K and HDR, and all current PS4 consoles are getting a firmware update with HDR functionality.
Games that are already out could then get patches for optimal performance. Keep that in mind during this exchange between Japanese website Game Impress Watch and Sony Interactive Entertainment exec Masayasu Ito:
Game Impress Watch: For the 4K HDR patch for existing titles, will it cost money? Or will it be free?
Ito: It will be different for each title. I believe it will depend on the thinking of each licensee*.
*Note: Here, Ito is referring to third-party publishers.
Game Impress Watch: What about Sony Interactive Entertainment?
Ito: I think it will vary for each one of our titles.
Game Impress Watch: What you’re saying is that there will be titles that have a fee [for the patch] and [patches for the] titles that are free.
Ito: That is correct.
Game Watch Impress: From here on out, we can think that all the titles from SIE will completely support PS4 Pro?
Ito: Right. The first party titles we put out are going to certainly support both [4K and HDR]. [Editor’s note: In the process of clarifying these comments, Sony added that all games will support 4K, but not all games will support both 4K and HDR.]
It sounds like there are still a lot of moving parts with what these fees could be and who is going to charge for them.
We’ll have to see how this develops.