Today, 505 Games is attempting to clear the air with a blog post about why it won’t be offering owners of the original Control game a free next-gen upgrade when that version releases in 2021. It comes after last week’s announcement that Control: Ultimate Edition, the $39.99 release that bundles the base game with all of the downloadable content, will give players on PS4 or Xbox One a free upgrade to the next-gen version. 505 caused some backlash when it said it won’t offer any such upgrade to people who bought the original copy of the game released in 2019.
The publisher is sticking to its original position of not offering a free upgrade to current owners of Control, though it wants players to know that it explored multiple avenues to make it happen. It doesn’t get into specifics, but each of those avenues apparently ended with some players “being left out of the upgrade for various reasons.”
The team at 505 also says “To bring Control to next generation consoles in any form, we had to make some difficult decisions and those came in the form of creating the simplified Control Ultimate Edition product plan we have today.”
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Image: Remedy Entertainment
Despite nothing changing, the blog reminds players that the base game and all of its DLC will be backwards compatible on both the PS5 and Xbox Series X. And the Ultimate Edition coming to those next-gen consoles will contain the same content as the current-generation version of the game. The main thing that you’ll miss out on playing the game via backwards compatibility is the improved graphics.
I’ll admit that I was more disappointed about this last week when I first wrote about it than I am now. I love Control, and while I disagree with the principle that early adopters should be funneled into paying again for the game to play on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, I understand the conclusion here. Had the game originally released in late 2019, or within this year, when both consoles became confirmed products with release dates, I definitely would have expected 505 Games to come through with an updated plan that looped everyone in at no cost. But it’s almost been a year since the game came out, and I guess the line needs to be drawn somewhere.
If anything, being able to play the game via backwards compatibility is a good consolation.
