The price of top-end AAA games is going up for the first time in over a decade, increasing by $10 from the $60 standard that has been in place since the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation. NPD analyst Mat Piscatella says that gamers will pay $70, if not happily, due to the demand for next-gen games.
Piscatella broached the subject on the Virtual Economy podcast last weekend, as reported by Gamesindustry.biz. "Game prices have stayed the same since 2005, when Call of Duty 2 first went to $59.99 on Xbox 360 and we've basically stayed there ever since," he explained. "Now, a lot of people will say a rise in base prices for the higher tier, premium games is needed to offset development costs, inflation or whatever, and all those arguments seem to fall flat. But what doesn't fall flat is that for some of these premium games, if the $10 increase was implemented, people would happily pay it."
Various industry figures have spoken about the increased cost of next-gen production throughout the new consoles' release cycles. Back in June, Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan warned that more technologically demanding games would "become slightly more human intensive and capital intensive to produce," but the new norm in game pricing wasn't revealed until 2K Sports announced its next-gen edition of NBA 2K21 for $70.
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