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It’s arguably cheaper than ever to play video games these days, but at the same time, the hobby is becoming increasingly more expensive. Yes, we have loads of great free-to-play titles out there, but the price of premium video games has been steadily rising for the past decade, with Nintendo attempting to set a new $80 standard with Mario Kart World.
Microsoft tried it before having to walk it back, presumably because it realized not many people buy its games for $70, while Take-Two was almost definitely toying with the idea of Borderlands 4 being $80 too, before revealing it would be the standard $70. All of these developers would probably tell you that they need to charge more thanks to rising development costs, and ex-PlayStation boss Shawn Layden agrees.
Ex-PlayStation Boss Thinks Game Prices Should Have Increased With Each Generation
In a new interview with Gamesindustry.biz (thanks VGC), Layden claimed that video game prices have stayed relatively the same over the past 20 years, despite increased development costs and inflation. He then goes on to claim that all the publishers out there right now are “afraid” to raise prices, knowing it would risk losing potential players.
It’s worth pointing out that Shawn Layden’s claims are categorically untrue, as the standard price of video games has actually risen by $20 over the past two decades. Yes, some still charge $50 and $60, but premium game prices have risen.
“No one wants to be the first one to raise the price, because you’re afraid to lose traffic,” says Layden. “So what you do is you just end up eating into your operating income, your profit margin.”
Layden then doubles down, stating that developers should have probably started charging more for games with each new generation to help combat rising development costs, but that the industry has instead adopted a “as long as we grow, even though we’re not making money, somehow we can’t die” mantra.
He goes on to say that the industry has now reached a crisis point, claiming that the “cost of construction is just way too high”, and that many developers are now relying on shifting millions of copies when it isn’t really feasible. He also says that this is why publishers now like to “nickel and dime” us with DLC, microtransactions, battle passes, and more.
It’s a pretty touchy topic, and one that doesn’t really have a correct answer. You could argue that games should be more expensive since they take so long and cost so much to make, but people are also strapped for cash these days, and nobody really asked publishers to make games with exorbitant budgets in the first place. It’s a tricky one, but at least we now know which side of the argument Shawn Layden sits on.
