Pocket Gamer reports that Apple’s 3.1.3 firmware for the iPod Touch is now free.

Apple has eliminated the price for upgrading your iPod touch to the latest firmware, making version 3.1.3 free for everyone.

That’s a significant shift by Apple, which had recently lowered the price of the firmware upgrade in hopes of coaxing iPod touch owners into purchase.

Instead, it’s free to download.

Syncing a second generation iPod touch today with an older version of the software prompted me to accept the free upgrade. How exciting.

Just as when asked to download and install the latest firmware on an iPhone, iTunes simply asks for confirmation – no signing in to pay for the software.

This is great news for iPod touch gamers with older devices. Now you’re free to upgrade and play a swathe of games that are only compatible with 3.0-specific features.

Please keep in mind, that I can’t verify this. My iPod Touch was already running v3.0… But this means there’s now very little reason for software developers to continue to support 2.x firmware. Asssuming this is true…

But, Apple would have little reason to keep v1 or v2 running and may have just given up the battle with upgrade costs…