Barely a five years ago We asked ourselves If 80 euros for a PlayStation 5 game was a lot or little. Today the thing has gone to more. Because of the latest movements in the industry and although no company has decided to take the final step, the psychological barrier of 100 euros already has more than “psychological” than authentic barrier. Because we already have it on the horizon.
The Take-Two CEO, of course. The last comment On the price of the games it has been from the Take-Two CEO (owner of Rockstar), Strauss Zelnick, who has spoken of “variable prices” when asked about ‘GTA VI‘. The game, he says, must be in proportion to the experience offered: “Our goal is to create The best entertainment in the world and take it to all consumers, wherever they are, and for that We must offer value“, he says, while defending the price of 50 euros for ‘Mafia: The Old Country’, also of the company.
It makes sense, but it hurts the same. The variable price, on the table, has logic: if the game is a blockbuster that It has cost 200 million dollars It will have a more expensive price than an indie production with a team of five people. But before that logic we find more or less arbitrary increases, that have been much discussed and that actually have a lot of industry’s score to see how far the machine can be forced. For example, in the announcement of his imminent switch 2, Nintendo talked about games such as ‘Mario Kart World’, with a price close to 90 euros In its physical edition.
The fallacy of entertainment. Meanwhile, we continue to see opinions such as Shuhei Yoshida, responsible for the PlayStation brand, today retired, and that said in an interview that “I think it remains a bargain (the price of 80-90 euros) considering the amount of entertainment that the highest quality games provide compared to other forms of entertainment.” It is a fallacy that has been widely refuted: The “Cost per hour” as a value measure and consequent excuse to raise prices blur the quality of experience in favor of the number of hours, and has taken us, over time, to A large amount of filling and superfluous material in video games.
To 80 those of PS5. The last time we saw such an aggressive price increase was when PlayStation 5 imposed as a rule for its AAA games the 80 euros. At that time, We adjust prices to inflation From the video game industry until its beginnings and we conclude that they were not as expensive as they seemed: the current 80 euros of PS5 equals almost 120 that the Super Nintendo games cost or the almost 400 of the Neo Geo games in the nineties. Have we gone to better? Are games cheaper now? The numbers seem to secure it.
Cheaper, but no. As Baitybait explained In a video about games pricesif we adjust to inflation today’s games are not so expensive. But the truth is that market circumstances have changed since the time of the Super Nintendo. They have changed, for example, certain sales strategies (before a game was a game and point; now there are special editions, microtransactions, DLCs and then launch complete editions …). The digital games market has also changed, now predominantand that has not brought with it a price decrease even though it is cheaper for companies.
And it has changed, in short, the fact that the number of releases has multiplied by ten, so the expectations that the player handles with each new game are very different from those that were handled in the eighties or the nineties. Currently investing in a game is not an action as carefree as before: each game is required much more. Therefore, the games are comparatively the same or even cheaper than before, but the player’s psychology has changed greatly.
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