In an ostensible attempt to prevent players from using the upcoming Remastered edition’s ‘$10 upgrade’ option to get the game at a significant discount, Sony has recently decided to raise the price on all new copies of the original Horizon Zero Dawn.
Officially announced on September 24th, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered will see Guerilla Games’ PS4 original brought to current gen hardware with a variety of visual, audio, and technical upgrades.
Said upgrades, per an official Sony blog post, will include “improved animation, lighting, [and] textures”, a “completely revamped the sound mix”, and “over 10 hours of re-recorded conversation [and] mocap”.
Releasing for the PlayStation 5 and PC (via Steam and Epic Games stores), like most such remasters, players who bought a copy, either physical or digital, of the original Horizon Zero Dawn or Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition will be able to ‘upgrade’ their copy and purchase a digital version of the Remastered release for just $10 USD, rather than its full price-tag of $50.
A welcome discount for those who already own the game, it seems Sony decided to offer the $10 upgrade option without checking their own financials, as for the last 6 years (ever since June 2018), Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition has held a PlayStation Network price tag, as per PS Prices, of just $20 – meaning a savy player could jump through a small hop to legally obtain a copy of the remaster for a grand total of $30.
Or at least that was the case up until the remaster’s official confirmation, as shortly after Sony revealed its existence, they raised the Complete Edition‘s standard PSN price back up to its original MSRP of $40 – thus erasing any potential discount the Remastered upgrade option would have offered.
While Sony has yet to provide any official comment on this backtracking of Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition‘s price tag, common sense suggests the move was very clearly done, as noted above, in order to prevent players from getting the upcoming release at a deep discount.
However, it seems this entire plan may end up backfiring, as GameStop is still selling physical pre-owned PS4 copies of the Complete Edition for just $20 – and given that the upgrade offer can be used crossplatform, you can bet that players will be rushing to buy them in order to get the best discount possible (and, for many, to stick it to Sony in the process).
Horizon Zero Dawn: Remastered hits the PlayStation 5 and PC platforms this Halloween.
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