‘Every avenue we pursued, there was some form of blocker’
505 Games has confirmed its stance regarding Remedy’s Control and its selective next-gen upgrade offer. In a statement posted on the Control website, the publisher apologised to customers, saying they had explored every avenue to please all players to no avail.
To recap, 505 Games will release Control Ultimate Edition on September 10 for PS4 and Xbox One. This GOTY-style compilation will feature the base game and its two DLC expansions. Players who purchase the Ultimate Edition will also receive a free upgrade to the next-gen edition of Control when the new platforms launch later in 2020. However, those who already own Control and its expansion packs do not qualify for the free upgrade. This news has upset some Control players who feel their loyalty has been “punished.”
“We spent several months exploring all of our launch options for Control Ultimate Edition and no decision was taken lightly,” said 505 Games in the statement. “While it is challenging bringing any game to next gen platforms, we quickly realised it was even more difficult to upgrade our current user base to next gen with full parity across platforms with our year-old game.”“Every avenue we pursued, there was some form of blocker and those blockers meant that at least one group of players ended up being left out of the upgrade for various reasons. As of today, we can’t offer an upgrade to everyone, and leaving any one group out feels unfair. We understand that is not what you want to hear.”
So, as it stands, purchasing Control Ultimate Edition is the only way to receive the next-gen upgrade. The vanilla edition of Control, along with its expansions, will not be sold separately on the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Control will be playable via backward compatibility, so players can carry over the current edition in some form, but the only way to play the “enhanced” edition will be to double-dip.
“To bring Control to next generation consoles in any form, we had to make some difficult decisions,” continues the statement. “Those came in the form of creating the simplified Control Ultimate Edition product plan we have today… That we took a while in responding does not mean we have not been listening. We are sorry we couldn’t meet everyone’s expectations and we hope you will continue to support Control. We thank you for your support thus far.”
Control Ultimate Edition launches digitally on PC via Steam August 27 and on PS4 and Xbox One September 10.
Control publisher refuses to budge despite next-gen upgrade backlash [Eurogamer]