The thorny issue of game pricing always proves controversial. There are those raised in the early 90s who recall the hundreds of notes they put on Super Nintendo cartridges for games like Street Fighter 2 Turbo. And then there are those raised on a diet of PS2s in the 2000s who remember getting a full physical game for about $50 that didn’t even require patching after inserting the disc.
Sure, there are plenty of reasons to love the current gaming industry, but many rightly feel that the cost of games is too high. Publishers have raised the prices of recent games to $60 on PS3, and now you have to pay $70 for anything other than Concord on PS5. That’s a lot of money, and inflation is making the numbers look compact more reasonable, the average consumer still feels price shock.
The problem is that there’s a huge discrepancy between the cost of making games and the prices fans are willing to pay. Sony’s single-player mega-budget games currently command hundreds of millions, and while it’s fair to point to the platform holder’s record profits, that’s still a huge amount of money for a publisher to spend on a title that could potentially flop.
One way publishers try to artificially inflate prices is through pricey Deluxe and Ultimate Editions. These often include Early Access, effectively enticing players to spend upwards of $120 on digital junk and the ability to play early. Star Wars Outlaws is a great example of this tactic in action, but those who spent more ended up with a slight advantage, as they were asked to restart their progress due to a bug.
While Baldur’s Gate 3 publishing director Michael Douse criticizes the practice, he believes the base price of games needs to escalate. “I believe a game should be priced appropriately for its quality, breadth, and depth,” he wrote on X (Or Twitter). “Almost all games should cost more at the base level, because their production costs (inflation, for example) outpace price trends. But I don’t think we’ll get there with promises of DLC, but rather quality and communication. Everyone’s waiting for GTA 6 to do that.”
