At Tokyo Game Show 2023, Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto shares a sentiment that most publishers will agree with: "Game prices are too low."
Here's what Tsujimoto said, as per Nikkei:
"Personally, I feel that game prices are too low. Development costs are about 100 times higher than during the Famicom era, but software prices have not gone up that much. There is also a need to raise wages. Considering the fact that wages are rising in the industry as a whole, I think raising unit prices is a healthy option for business."
It's possible that Tsujimoto was just speaking out loud here and that Capcom may not actually move to $70 for its new marquee titles. There's a big reason for this rationale.
No.. just no. Game prices are high enough.. Even digital only games are still $60 Combine that with the fact that very little games are actually unique and worth the price.. I feel like we are getting closer to another dark era of gaming.
Games have been $50-$60 since Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis. And those games aren't even close to the amount of technical fidelity/hardware requirements seen in most AAA games. Video games are, by a technical standpoint, the cheapest products of entertainment you can get. Games actually should be at least $100 if we're taking into account inflation.
That being said, I'm not paying $60-70 for technical/game design flops like Diablo VI or Forspoken. Those devs gotta earn my money. You're literally better off getting a couple/few indie games for that same price and are probably better than the sludge that is AAA games nowadays. And to give it to developers who ACTUALLY deserve that money. You'd have to make a very good game for me to drop $70. The problem is that, even if there were a small minority of people who stopped paying $70 for games, there's still gonna be a vast majority of people who probably would drop those 7 Hamiltons like they drop 60 bucks for the new yearly sports game.
