What should have been a straightforward celebration for Red Dead Redemption fans quickly turned into a headache for one particular console community: Rockstar’s native release on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2, plus a free next-gen upgrade for existing owners, sounded great on paper, but a glitch with an older digital edition has left part of the Xbox crowd staring at a paywall instead of a free upgrade.

Instead of simply enjoying a long-awaited western classic in its new form, many Red Dead Redemption fans have found themselves wrestling with store pages and error messages. John Marston’s journey is now available natively on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2, and Take-Two’s promise of a free upgrade for those who already own the game looked like a generous move. In practice, though, players with certain digital Xbox 360 editions discovered that the supposedly free next-gen version still carried a full price tag, forcing Rockstar and Microsoft into damage-control mode.

The rollout has been confusing from the start, and PureXbox has been tracking the situation as it evolves. Rockstar’s initial statement said that a free digital upgrade would be available to those who owned the game on “PS4, Nintendo Switch, or the backward-compatible digital version on Xbox One.” From there, many assumed that their Xbox 360 digital copies, which work through backward compatibility, would also qualify. Instead, when they tried to claim the Series X/S edition, the Xbox store simply asked them to pay again if they wanted to revisit John Marston’s adventure on current hardware.

It has since been confirmed that this is indeed a bug. In a post on X, Rockstar acknowledged the issue and promised a fix in cooperation with Microsoft: “We are aware of an issue where Xbox players are unable to upgrade their digital version of Red Dead Redemption from Xbox 360 to the Xbox Series version and are working with Microsoft to resolve it.”

There has already been some movement in the right direction. Only a few hours ago, many Xbox 360 digital owners were still seeing a price attached to the Series X/S version. Now the store has been updated so that they can obtain the new edition at no cost. The catch is that the system treats this as a limited-time 100% discount and even shows a message saying the “offer” expires in 13 days. Chances are good that this odd presentation will quietly disappear once the technical side of the fix is fully ironed out.

Red Dead Redemption Is Also Riding Onto Netflix

While most of the headlines understandably focus on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch versions, it is worth remembering that Rockstar has also brought John Marston’s story to Netflix. Subscribers to the streaming service, better known for films and TV series, can now experience one of gaming’s most acclaimed westerns on iOS and Android devices, complete with touchscreen controls.

That move will undoubtedly introduce Red Dead Redemption to an even broader audience, whether they play on consoles, mobile devices or via cloud solutions. All of this makes the Xbox upgrade snafu even more awkward: as the game becomes easier to access almost everywhere else, one platform’s most loyal fans are left wrestling with a problem that, ideally, should have been fixed quietly in the background long before launch day.

Source: 3djuegos