Sony may offer a PS4 upgrade plan to PS3 owners of The Last of Us

If you own The Last of Us on PlayStation 3, you might hesitate before dropping $60 to get the Remastered release on PS4 when it hits this summer. Sony gets that, and it is looking into potentially offering an upgrade path to lessen the financial blow.

Top people at Sony and developer Naughty Dog are looking into business models to discount the The Last of Us Remastered for people who already own the original on PS3. The Last of Us debuted on the last-gen system in June. The studio is now working on bringing an upgraded version to Sony’s latest console, called The Last of Us Remastered, that also includes all of the downloadable content for $60. Some fans — after spending $60 on the PS3 version and maybe even something extra on the DLC — feel like $60 for essentially the same experience is too much.

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That has prompted gamers to ask Sony and Naughty Dog about the possibility that they might offer a discount to people who own The Last of Us on PS3. Well, that’s definitely possible.

“We’re looking into the business model for all this,” Naughty Dog community specialist Eric Monacelli wrote in response to a fan. “And we will post about this once we have input from all regions.”

Sony likely has an accountant or two crunching the numbers about how many current The Last of Us owners it can convert and at what price.

This wouldn’t mark the first time that a game company has offered an upgrade path from last to current gen. For a limited time, Sony offered a number of different ways for gamers that owned Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, and Injustice: Gods Among Us on PS3 a way to move to the PS4. This involved codes that were included with the retail dics as well as special prices on the PS4 version (often $10) for people who own the digital PS3 release.

Microsoft did this as well. Players could trade in a number of Xbox 360 games at participating retail stores for the opportunity to purchase the Xbox One release for only $10. Electronic Arts supported this with all of its games, including Madden NFL 25, Need for Speed: Rivals, and Fifa 14.

Neither Sony nor Microsoft’s upgrade programs are still in effect.