One of the great announements from Sony’s Gamescom 2013 keynote by president Andrew House was the pathway for gamers to upgrade select PS3 titles for their PS4 counterpart for a fraction of the price. Two big publishers, Activision and EA, are already onboard with the program with the former company announcing that, when gamers purchase Call of Duty: Ghosts for the PS3, they can later on redeem a downloadable copy for the PS4 for only $10. Other games such as Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, Watch Dogs, and Battlefield 4 will also partake in the program. Now UK managing director Fergal Gara has revealed that it is up to the individual publisher to establish the upgrade pricing.

 What will happen is, the PS4 digital file will be made available on the PlayStation Store – as it would be anyway – at launch, and the PS3 discs will be sold through retail. What the consumer can then do, for a premium to be defined by the publisher, is access the PS4 digital game and then provided they still have the PS3 disc, they will be able to play the PS4 version when they decide to buy the next gen. 

According to the keynote that House gave, such deals would not last forever either, indicating that window will exist when gamers will be able to upgrade. Gara further elaborated:

 Time window and price window has yet to be defined. Time window is probably more business policy for PlayStation, perhaps, but the premium will be defined by the publisher 

With the premium being the upgrade cost, it seems that this will be an initiative that will be mostly defied by 3rd party publishers. Sony’s internal teams like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studios, and Sucker Punch tend to work on one platform at a time and so such promotions will not apply to them.

Discuss:

Do you see yourself taking advantage of such a program or will you either game on the PS3 or PS4?

[Via DigitalSpy]