Making the jump from PS4 to PS5? Well, ya gotta pay.

This seems to be a bit of a hot topic lately. Imagine you've owned a PlayStation 4 and amassed quite the game collection. Suddenly, you get a shiny new PlayStation 5. We don't know how or why and we don't want to know. The fact is: You got one. It's yours. Now, those games you've been enjoying on the PlayStation 4 have special PlayStation5 upgrades, but the problem is, you gotta pay.

Want to play at higher resolutions? Have faster loading times? See all of that new graphical eye candy that is only in the PS5 version of the game? Want high refresh rates? You gotta pay.

Sure, you could just run the game in backwards compatibility mode, but you'll be missing out on content. Content that you want because you have a powerful, new system. Why else would you even get a PS5 if it wasn't to have the games you play be the best that they can possibly be?

The question now is: Should these upgrades be free?

As we have already seen, a number of Sony's first-party titles are not offering free upgrades when you go from the PlayStation 4 to the PlayStation 5. The most recent example of this came on September 2 when Sony revealed that Horizon Forbidden West would have no free upgrade path for those buying the Standard PlayStation 4 version of the game. If you want an upgrade, or if you even think that you're going to want an upgrade later on, you'll need to spend at least $80 to get the Digital Deluxe version right out of the gate. Sony isn't even letting you upgrade your Standard Edition to this Digital Deluxe version. If you want it, it's $80 at least.

Is it a ripoff?

After all, you're already spending hundreds of dollars on new hardware. As I read somewhere: It's almost like if you bought a new GPU for your PC, going to crank up some graphical settings in your favorite game, and then getting a pop-up saying you have to pay extra to go from low to high settings because it detects the upgraded video card.

The situation gets even more frustrating when you see that there are other games from other studios that are offering free upgrades to consumers making the jump from PS4 to PS5. Just look at what 4A Games and Deep Silver did with Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition. If you owned the PS4 version of the game, you got a free upgrade to the Enhanced Edition on PlayStation 5 at no extra cost. And this wasn't just some simple resolution upgrade either. This was a release that added in real-time ray tracing, 4K resolution, 60FPS, added in FOV options, and incorporated DualSense functionality.

Several other games have also offered free upgrades to their PS5 versions such as (and not limited to): DOOM Eternal, Borderlands 3, Mortal Kombat 11, Godfall, A Plague Tale: Innocence, Outriders, Saints Row: The Third Remastered, Rainbow Six: Siege, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, The Elder Scrolls Online, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

So, what say you? Should these upgrades be free? Also, this isn't even getting into the fact that next-gen versions of games are already being sold at a $10 premium compared to previous-gen versions of the same games. That's another matter entirely.