On the cusp of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, there’s been endless debate on what’s most important with “next-gen.” Is it faster load times? Better graphics? The increase in overall raw technical power that can soon rival a PC? While all pretty good answers, 2K announcing that NBA 2K21 will cost $69.99 on next-gen systems instead of $59.99 is a decision that could define this generation.
In 2005, Activision took a big leap and released Call of Duty 2 at $59.99, marking the start of the $59.99 price point. Financial experts in the industry estimated the price point would increase alongside the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but publishers instead started releasing more DLC and experimenting with all sorts of special editions. These adjustments were a means to offset the steadily increase of costs to develop games. Former Sony president Shawn Layden explained in a recent interview at Gamelab Live (a global digital forum) on the current landscape of creating AAA games. Layden said that the cost of creating games has gone up “ten times” and the current AAA game model isn’t working. So yes, a price increase is long overdue and there should be plenty of benefits to reap from it, but that also doesn’t mean we could be in for a bumpy ride.
Taking a business approach, having the price for games increase to $69.99 will do wonders. While many see it as “only” a $10 markup on the micro-level, large publishers should see a significant revenue increase. With the added revenue, publishers would have the ability to create more jobs to avoid possible crunch periods in game development. Working game developers into the ground has been an ongoing problem in the industry, and if the added revenue from increasing game prices can help relieve that, or increase the wages of those developers, then we should fully support it.
You might be asking, “Okay, I understand increasing the price of games can potentially help game creators, but how does it help me?” Good question. Seeing that you’ll have to pay more money for something now than in the past typically doesn’t sit well with people. However, there is hope. Up until now, Sony and Microsoft have kept the price of the PS5 and Xbox Series X completely under wraps. Knowing that the landscape of game pricing is about to change and it’s safe to assume those two publishers factored this increase in their financial projections, what if the PS5 and Xbox Series X cost only $500? What about $400?
Sony does not want a repeat of the PS3, where it effectively priced much of its fans out with a $499/$599 price tag. It’s possible that the $10 increase in games might be enough for Sony and Microsoft to sell these consoles at a slight loss, knowing the money can be recouped through game sales. Offering the consoles at a more affordable price, we can practically guarantee sellouts for these consoles. That will ensure higher game sales of next-gen titles at the new $69.99 price point straight from the get-go. You win by getting a console that won’t cost a month of rent, and the publishers win with higher game sales.
As is the case with most good news, there’s usually something bad that follows shortly after. Raising the price of games to $69.99 will most certainly benefit larger publishers, but smaller ones might see rough times ahead. With the cost of creating games becoming more and more expensive, consumers already have to be somewhat picky when deciding what games to buy. A higher base price point unfortunately raises the possibility of some of these smaller publishers effectively shutting down or being bought. In 2018, Telltale Games shut down as a result of poor sales. Telltale created amazing narrative, choice-driven stories based on popular licenses, sold these games at less than the $59.99 price point, and still experienced poor sales. Lesser-known titles will slip under the radar more frequently, and because of that, more of these publishers could also shut down.
Ultimately, increasing the price of games is inevitable. Having this change occur alongside major console releases only makes sense, but publishers need to be smart about it. Consumers are not going to react kindly to a hike in games, even if inflation demanded an increase for years now. One way to ensure a smooth transition is to sell the PS5 and Xbox Series X at an affordable price. Allow consumers the financial flexibility to actually be in a position to buy next-gen games. Provide better wages for the talented individuals behind these games, make them feel wanted. Hopefully, publishers will be transparent and proactive about utilizing the revenue increase that’s sure to follow. Otherwise, people will feel slighted and think this was all a money grab to line the pockets of higher executives. Publishers have the power to paint themselves as heroes or be portrayed as villains.
Which will it be?
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Development costs are completely inflated with useless crap. Games have never been cheaper to produce, especially decently high quality ones. Budgets are doubled by pointless advertising that statistically doesn’t work that well. Voice actors thinking they’re worth more than they are. Mocap and fancy cutscenes. Games (the gameplay itself) are cheap to make. If they want to raise prices, go nuts, my standards are again going to go up. This entire generation was a joke paying 69 to 79 a game in Canada, so I skipped a lot at launch. How can these games be worth it when they rarely function at launch?
Do not buy the lie that costs are going up. Pure propaganda. If they want to increase costs they can show us their expenses. Otherwise we’ll get a stream of bad jokes like Star Citizen.
Games have been the same price since forever though. My main gripe here is if that extra $ goes to execs, then yeah, it’s useless. I hope we get a more flexible pricing scheme for games in the future. $30, $50, etc.
Borderlands 1 did this and succeeded because of that lower entry cost. The money isn’t “necessarily” going to executives, they just have incredibly poor spending habits and executives are always a large expense. That dynamic doesn’t change much, what has changed is marketing/talent/CGI costs. Worked up cutscenes are not cheap to make. Worse, they’re massively time consuming. If game development shifted towards gameplay almost exclusively while marketing was left to far more organic marketers? We would see a lot of developers bounce back. It’s no secret that dozens of developers and good chunk of publishers vanished this generation, and still people pretend the industry is healthy.
Like I said, if they want to increase costs, fine. I want access to what they’re spending money on. Every single dollar. These things shouldn’t be hidden from the public when marketing has turned into a false advertisement mill. Next thing would be sales figures, another thing far too often hidden from gamers. Journalists don’t even get access to this, they have to dig like the rest of us.
Increased costs are a minor issue tacked on to the big issue. Most publishers can’t read the room and developers are beholden to their terrible choices. For every success, we get 5 failures. This industry needs to crash, hard. The crahs needs to hit bottom, actually. We’ve been in one since 2010 and nobody wants to talk about it.
Well why are they doing CGI when in-engine cutscenes are more than good enough? As far as voice talent goes, hollywood has shown us what happens to actors when the asking price gets too high.
To be honest I love a lot of the indie games made in the last 10 years. Even something of the AA efforts, I think microsoft may be on to something with gamepass and AA titles as well but that’s another topic. I think a lot of indie devs are doing better games with a 10th of the budget of a AAA title. Also a lot of developers are leaving the AAA studios to start these indie shops. I think having tools like Unity dramatically cut costs. I’m almost sure 50% of it comes down to marketing and bloat. When Square Enix said the initial 3-5 million(can’t remember the exact #) for the tomb raider reboot wasn’t enough I was baffled. At one point a million sold was considered successful. Hellblade, Inside and Ori and a few others are some of the best games I’ve ever played and I guarantee they didn’t have bloated budgets. Maybe working remote will save a lot of these companies money on office rent and misc supplies. I think the cost of using influencers for marketing is going to rise.
I’m surprised prices haven’t gone up in years with how much money is needed for AAA titles these days. Consumers will only see their side, they’ll make excuses, or cry foul instead of trying to understand the company point of view but in all honesty AAA games should cost more whether we like it or not. Games like NBA2K or other nonsense like that should not be sold at the same price as AAA titles but instead stay at $60 or less.
Dlc and digital should of made up for anything. The excuse was digital would be less due to savings on shipping and packaging. Well we see those savings weren’t passed on to consumers. We get half assed games now and they want 70 for it? Hell no! It’s also weird when a game like God of War is 60 bucks then some bs like Fallout 76 and Anthem is too, or nba 2k and madden which are just a fresh coat of paint. They want us to pay 70 for that?! Nope.