The Death Stranding Director's Cut will be available as a next-gen upgrade for anyone who owns the original game on PS4, but not as .
In a recent video Q&A, Jay Boor, head of publishing at developer Kojima Productions, explained how the upgrade system will work. A question posed on Twitter asked whether the developer was "calling it a Director's Cut so they can sell it again at full price and not offer a free upgrade for people that bought the original cut on PS4," with user Apnomis saying that "if there was a small upgrade fee [...] I might consider it, but not paying full price again."
Boor explained that this was almost exactly how the path will work, stating that "if you purchased any Death Stranding digital version for PS4, you get the full Death Stranding Director's Cut Digital Deluxe edition for PS5 for only $10." If you haven't purchased the game yet because you've been waiting for its next-gen cut, you'll be able to get both the standard version, and the Digital Deluxe version with its handful of add-ons, via the PlayStation Store.
This isn't the first time that a next-gen version of a PS4 game has seen a slight increase in price. For example, if you want to upgrade Ghost of Tsushima on PS4 to the Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut on PS5, that'll set you back around $30. Given that Sucker Punch is billing its new cut as a full expansion rather than a collection of new content, that should explain why it'll cost less to upgrade Death Stranding.
Elsewhere in the video, Boor explains the new graphical options available in the director's cut. There'll be two picture modes; a 4K 60fps performance mode, and 'Fidelity Mode', which also runs at 4K, but features HDR and ultrawide support. There's also a discussion about what exactly the term 'Director's Cut' means for Kojima and his development team.
Death Stranding Director's Cut is currently due to launch on PS5 on September 24, but is available to pre-order right now via the PlayStation Store.
For more of the best of next-gen, here's a list of upcoming PS5 games.
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I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.