PS4 Pro: There will be a fee, per game, for 4K-compatible patches

Update: Sony has clarified the issue, yet hasn’t, telling Polygon it “will not charge consumers for patches.”

Meanwhile, Absinthe Games founder, Jack Sipich, has taken to NeoGAF to declare that developers “are not allowed to charge you [players] for patches or [PS4 Pro] feature updates.”

It’s still unclear if third-party publishers will have to pay Sony a fee for 4K updates.

Original story: In an interview with Game Impress Watch (as translated by Kotaku), Sony’s Masayasu Ito suggested that gamers — or publishers — may have to pay, per game, for 4K support.

Yeah. Either or; it’s a bit unclear.

It’s possible that it’s a case of an interview lost in translation, either way, but here’s the transcript of the conversation:

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.

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].

Either way, it kind of sucks.

In a best-case scenario, third-party publishers will need to spend more money (instead of gamers themselves) to support a 4K patch that only a fraction of the PS4 userbase will take advantage of. Think they’ll be keen to do it?

We’ll report back when more is known.

We’ve clarified the story to better represent the situation that currently presents itself.