Andrew Wilson, the infamous CEO of Electronic Arts, has scored a rare win by seemingly refuting a recent rumor – sparked by industry insider Billbil-kun – that Battlefield 6 would be priced at $80 and stating that EA, though not for especially noble reasons, has no plans to follow Nintendo and Xbox in raising game prices at this time.
Responding to a question about video game pricing during Electronic Arts’ latest earnings conference call (timestamp 20:58), Wilson confirmed that, at this stage, the company has no plans to make “any changes on pricing,” suggesting that the so-called “industry-standard” $70 price tag will remain EA’s default.
That said, the CEO was quick to clarify that his decision had nothing to do with magnanimity, essentially stating that EA isn’t raising prices simply because it already has enough ways to monetize its games and simply doesn’t need to sell them at $80 – which, one has to admit, is a smart move, considering that $80 games tend to attract more backlash and negative press these days than microtransactions and similar predatory monetization tactics, which, unfortunately, have become the norm for many.
“We already offer a fairly broad pricing scheme across our various products,” Wilson responded. “When you think about everything from free-to-play through to our premium products and deluxe editions, our orientation is always to capture the full spectrum of pricing so that we can serve players in the best way possible and offer them the greatest value. We’ll continue to look at opportunities to deliver great value to our players through various pricing schemes over the course of time, but no dramatic changes planned yet.”
Interestingly, Microsoft also recently walked back its decision to raise prices by ten bucks after facing heavy criticism from the enraged gaming community, lowering the price of Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds 2 from $80 to $70 – still $10 more than the original, but that’s beside the point – and confirming in a separate statement that they will “keep our full priced holiday releases at $69.99 – in line with current market conditions.”
As such, Nintendo remains the only major AAA publisher to have increased its standard prices, but given that this is Nintendo we’re talking about – a studio with by far the most loyal audience – it’s unlikely they’ll get hit with enough backlash to reverse course.
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