No one is saying that it should be free. The issue is that $50 for a straight port of a 13 year-old game is ridiculous when Sony’s competitor offers free backwards compatibility—and 4K upscaling. Microsoft absorbed their expenses for that as the cost of doing business, and it would be a blip on Rockstar’s balance sheet as well, since they make a perpetual avalanche of money from GTA Online. There’s really no credible justification for a price this high.
No one is saying that it should be free. The issue is that $50 for a straight port of a 13 year-old game is ridiculous when Sony’s competitor offers free backwards compatibility—and 4K upscaling. Microsoft absorbed their expenses for that as the cost of doing business, and it would be a blip on Rockstar’s balance sheet as well, since they make a perpetual avalanche of money from GTA Online. There’s really no credible justification for a price this high.
Microsoft only did that because their first party output over the last decade was embarrassingly bad.