The video game market is stagnant, revenues are not increasing and costs are skyrocketing. Is a further increase in game prices, after that of 2020, inevitable?
The AAA video game market is in crisis. Game development is becoming increasingly time-consuming and consequently expensive, while revenues are not increasing at the same rate, with publishers who can capitulate even with a single commercial flop. Inflation has made everything rise and predictions of potential growth during the pandemic have proven wildly wrong, leading to numerous closures and the layoffs of more than 20,000 workers in the last two years alone. If you follow our pages with a certain assiduity or the gaming scene in general, these are concepts that you probably know well, and perhaps you even find having to reiterate them boring. But then why are we surprised and excited when we talk about a possible increase in video game prices which seems increasingly inevitable?
It’s obvious, no one likes paying more, especially considering that the last increase in prices only occurred in 2020. However, I find it difficult to be optimistic about this. In these last four years of water (and inflation, just think of the increases in PS5 and Xbox Series average user has been accustomed to a constant increase in production valueswith games that are first increasingly beautiful from a technical point of view and then with increasingly larger open worlds, possibly filled with cookie-cutter secondary activities.
Are video games for 90 euros a necessary evil?
Obviously the fault lies above all with those who have instilled in the user the idea that “the bigger the better”, creating a market where it is impossible to innovate with high budget productions and where the average player is used to an increase in quality and quantity which leads to costs that grow at a faster rate than revenues. And now we certainly can’t go back, it’s difficult to slow down the pace drastically, it’s almost impossible to re-educate the public.
Consequently, barring any unexpected positive turns, a further increase in video game prices is becoming an increasingly probable hypothesis. The CEO of Embracer Group, Lars Wingefors, also recently discussed it, speaking about how the “video game sector is facing the same problem as all other industrieswith inflation and rising development costs.”
I know, you turned up your nose. After all, Embracer Group is the giant with feet of clay, the protagonist of the most ferocious staff and team cut program in recent years, as well as the emblem of the short-sighted market strategies for which the entire sector is paying the price. In short, the devil himself. So let me quote Capcom. We are talking about a company in a state of grace in recent years, with a positive turnover for 11 years in a row and loved by players. Yet, last year President Haruhiro Tsujimoto spoke about how a possible solution to deal with rising costs is precisely to increase the prices of games. Or again, the well-known market analyst Serkan Toto who gives Nintendo Switch 2 400 dollars for sure (100 dollars more than today’s model) and the price of games increased to 70 dollars, in line with the current price of PS5 and Xbox Series .
Would GTA 6 at 90 euros remain on the shelf gathering dust?
Faced with news and discussions about a possible price increase, there are always those who say they will no longer buy games at launch or will buy fewer, waiting for a price drop in the following months. It is a fair and acceptable reasoning, of course, but which is evidently limited to a niche. In 2020, video games increased in price and the mass public continued to purchase them. PS5 increased in price in 2022, but this did not prevent it from matching and exceeding the units sold of PS4, which had already undergone a first price cut in the same period of time.
And then I ask you a question. If GTA 6 was sold for more than the canonical 80 euros on PS5 and Xbox Series Nintendo Switch 2 for 400 euros Would it stay on store shelves? And if we want we can extend the example to other highly anticipated titles, such as EA Sports FC, the new The Witcher, Monster Hunter Wilds, the next couple of Pokémon games, Call of Duty and so on and so forth. In your opinion, would players (intended as the mass public) be willing to deprive themselves of these titles or wait months for a drop in price? Let’s talk about.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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