The Friday letters page blames publishers for not seeking alternatives to price increases, as one reader hopes that indie gaming will benefit from rising costs.
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Higher and higher
So that’s it then. £80 is clearly going to be the high-end for video game prices even before we’ve had the excuse of a new generation. Heck, it’ll probably be £100 or more when GTA 6 comes out.
A part of me wonders whether this is Microsoft trying to make Game Pass seem like the only affordable option, but I don’t know if they’re really that crazy. Although based on how they’ve carried on recently… I couldn’t rule it out.
I have no doubt that Sony will raise its prices to £80, although they may wait till the PlayStation 6, so as to appear like the good guys. I definitely think Nintendo has been unfairly criticised. You can see now that they’re trying to keep costs as low as possible and even the most expensive price for Mario Kart World is still less than £80. Much less digitally.
You can bet other publishers won’t be so thoughtful though. Call Of Duty, EA Sports FC, Assassin’s Creed… any big game like that is going to be £80 sooner or later. The only question is whether they do it straight away or wait until GTA 6 is out and it raises the bar even higher.
It’s not good and it’s not going to get better.
Cranston
Independent advice
All I can say about the Xbox prices rises, and what’s bound to be industry wide price rises, is that thank goodness for indie games. It’s interesting that all this is happening just after Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 comes out and there’s a lot of talk of most of the best games of the year being indie.
I haven’t played them all but Clair Obscur, Blue Prince, Bionic Bay, Citizen Sleeper 2 are all very highly rated and all very different. Which is more than you can say about most triple-A games.
I’m probably being naïve, but I really hope this sudden price increase helps make people aware of indie games and how much better value they are, and how much more imaginative they are. Clair Obscur is £45 and I think that’s probably the most expensive I’ve ever seen an indie game. Keep that as the upper limit for everything and you wouldn’t be looking at pricing people out of gaming.
Purple Ranger
Just say no
So now it’s Microsoft jumping on the bandwagon… consoles up, games up…
People need to stop simping for these corporations and say no!
£80 games is a disgrace, in a time where essentials like, you know, food, electricity, etc. are going up, games are not a priority and by the look of it they are not for the average person.
The only way they will listen is if people simply don’t buy them.
Vote with your wallets people.
Kingshomari (PSN ID)
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Digital only
I’m confused.com, why is Sony only price increasing the digital PlayStation 5? If the digital has less on it why does it need to go up? I could understand the disc version going up, because of the disc drive, but not the digital only.
And as for Xbox, are they trying to lose the few people they have got still playing their console, buy increasing the price of games? This might be because Nintendo have done so on the Switch 2, well the way it’s going this will be my last gen I buy.
I think prices are getting silly now. If only I could go back to the PlayStation 3 days of £40 a game, no in-game purchases and updates that were 1GB at most. I might sound old but boy do I miss the good old days.
David
GC: It’s not clear but the Xbox Series S also got a bigger price hike than the Xbox Series X. It may be that both of these cheaper options were being sold at or near a loss and Sony and Microsoft decided they could no longer continue with that. For what it’s worth, £40 in 2007 is £66.56 today, once you account for inflation.
Award contender
I know you weren’t fans of South Of Midnight but after just finishing I gotta say it had me hooked. I’m also not sure what else out there combines that kind of playful happy colour pallet graphics with such dark storylines. I was not at all prepared when the first one hit.
Also, how much great music is in this game? It felt like every chapter had a track written for it that was different but fitted. I’ll be shocked if it’s not nominated for some game music awards at the end of the year.
Lastly, perfect length. Not too long, not too short. Highly recommend it.
Tim
Previous form
Very upset to see Codemasters in trouble. I knew this would happen when EA bought them, but I didn’t expect it to be the is quick. They only got to make one WRC game and now they’re not making any rally games at all? It’s a crying shame.
My guess is that EA will have them making F1 games until the licence runs out, then EA won’t bother to renew it and that will be the complete end of Codemasters.
If I was EA, I would’ve realised that their traditional focus on sports and relatively realistic concepts wasn’t working any more. Football and Madden are their only two sports games that do big business nowadays, Battlefield has never been properly mass market, and racing games just are not that popular anymore.
How many developers have been shut down by EA over the years? Origin, Bullfrog, Maxis, Westwood Studios, Dreamworks Interactive, Mythic, Pandemic… I bet there’s tons more than even that.
Codemasters’s used to be so varied and so very British but now all they do is make simulators and that’s enough of a shame. Having them just cease to exist in a year or two is going to be even worse.
Bennett
Touchscreen battle royale
I had no idea Fortnite wasn’t on iOS, I thought that was sorted out years ago. I’m actually very surprised by that. It’s especially an eye-opener because it means that mobile was not a big part of Fortnite’s audience. I thought it was, what with it being ultra casual and everything.
So what are kids playing Fortnite on? Is that why PCs have become big again? I’d be interested in hearing what other readers and their family play it on.
Hacker
Blame the customer
It’s been said before, but it is incredible to me that publishers’ reactions to games costing to much is to immediately pass that cost onto ordinary customers. Make games shorter or limit their budgets? Doesn’t seem to have been considered for a second. It’s worse than that because it’s the idea that they’re in any way at fault that has been completely rejected.
Despite the fact that they should’ve been planning for this moment for decades, they’ve done nothing and just made up their policies on the fly. It’s pathetic and, to be honest, they deserve to be punished financially for it.
They won’t be though. People will just pay whatever they ask and while they might lose a few people around the edges, the fact the games are more expensive will make up for it.
I do wonder what’s going to happen with GTA 6 though, not in terms of it increasing prices (that seems a given) but whether it’ll actually cause some publishers to go bust. EA already seems vulnerable, so if GTA 6 takes interest away from EA Sports 26 then what are EA going to do?
Wish they’d invested in more franchises, I would have thought. But putting all your eggs in one basket is business 101 as far as most games companies seem to be concerned.
Lumpy
Inbox also-rans
‘You know what will solve the Xbox’s sales woes? Putting the prices up!’ – some overpaid suit at Microsoft, probably.
Anon
I’m not gonna buy an Xbox until they put the price up to a grand. I also think they should call the next generation Xbox Won. That will work.
Ed
The Xbox Series X is now £50 more expensive? Is Microsoft running the Xbox division as some sort of tax write-off or something?
Gant
I don’t know if GameCentral has seen this and it is slightly off topic, but there is a Kickstarter campaign for the full collection of UK and US comic books of Transformers! The campaign is being run by Skybound. It is 8432% fully funded!
Andrew J.
GC: We believe it broke the record for the most funding on Kickstarter in one day. But it’s too expensive for us, especially as the UK material is shrunk way down from its original size.
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