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I'm not going to guarantee a firmware update for the 500 but I do think it's likely.
While Sony is no longer making money from 500 sales, they are currently still making money from 500 owners because those people can still buy from the Sony store. If they do the store switchover and don't update the firmware, they lose that revenue stream.
This didn't matter when they first added ePub to the 505 because they were still able to make money from the BBeB-only 500. Adding ADE to the 505 at that point helped revenue through increased device sales. (At least that was the plan.) Adding ADE to the 500 at that point, would do nothing for Sony except possibly make people shift book purchases to another store.
Now that Sony is shifting to ePub-only the lack of ADE support on the 500 will cost them money. They don't want to tell part of their existing customer base they don't want to take their money. They want 500 owners to keep buying books from them - and that means either keeping LRX in the store or updating the 500 to support ADE.
There's also the secondary point that while getting a discount on a trade-in would and should be called an "upgrade path" it's not really appropriate to call it an "update path." Upgrade generally means replacement (either in whole or in part) while update is more commonly taken to mean change rather than replacement.
They haven't officially said anything - but all the signs point more toward a new firmware than a trade-in.
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