In recent weeks, players have been coming to terms with the realisation that gaming is getting more expensive. Nintendo unveiled the Switch 2 with some interesting software price points, Xbox bumped up first-party titles to around $80, and five-year-old consoles picked up new, boosted price tags.
I believe this was inevitable, and Shuhei Yoshida agrees. In a recent interview, the former PlayStation head shared his thoughts on increasing prices in the gaming world, stressing that it was always bound to happen.
‘Maybe Not From Nintendo’
Shuhei Yoshida recently retired from PlayStation (and Sony) after an illustrious career, but his insights are still immensely valuable.
In a recent interview with PlayStation Inside, the gaming veteran responded to a question about the rising price of software and how the trend will impact future releases:
I think it was going to happen sooner or later, maybe not from Nintendo, but it was going to happen eventually. We live in contrasting times, where inflation is real and significant, but people expect games that are ever more ambitious and therefore expensive to develop to cost the same. It’s an impossible equation.
Everything in video games today is more advanced and more technologically demanding than ever before, and therefore requires more resources. Each publisher or manufacturer sets the price of its games, of course, but in the end the heart of the matter lies in production costs.
On the most recent episode of the Insider Gaming Weekly Podcast, we covered the topic of rising prices in video games (software and hardware), and I pushed the point several times about this being an inevitability.
It’s not a written rule, but AAA games especially are becoming increasingly expensive because the budgets required to piece them together are swelling. Let’s not forget about the rumours that Grand Theft Auto 6 has cost more than $2 billion to develop. That’s likely why Strauss Zelnick is open to pricing GTA 6 at $100.
Do you think rising prices in gaming are inevitable and we should just deal with that as gamers? Let me know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming forum.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
I like money correction he wanted higher pay