Former PlayStation US boss Shawn Layden says the value of video video games ought to have been rising each new era, to cowl the rise in growth prices.
Layden, who was chairman of the corporate’s worldwide studios group when he left Sony in 2019, shared his ideas on online game pricing in a brand new function by GamesIndustry.biz.
On the subject of recreation costs growing to $80, Layden famous that the price of premium video games had stayed the identical for the previous 20 years regardless of the mixture of elevated growth prices and inflation.
“I feel it’s as a result of everybody’s afraid,” he urged. “Nobody desires to be the primary one to boost the value, since you’re afraid to lose site visitors. So what you do is you simply find yourself consuming into your working revenue, your revenue margin.”
Layden stated that by charging the identical worth for video games whereas growing recreation budgets on the identical time, it’s inevitable that firms make much less internet revenue consequently.
“There have been extra sports activities vehicles within the car parking zone within the PS1 period than there have been within the PS4 period, as a result of in case you’re promoting 20 million models at $60 for one thing that solely value you $10 million to make, that’s totally different than promoting 20 million models at $60 for one thing that value you $160 million to make,” he defined.
In response to the article, Layden then stated that video games ought to have elevated in worth with each new era, however that as a substitute the trade’s mantra has been “so long as we develop, regardless that we’re not being profitable, in some way we will’t die”.
Layden stated this mind-set has now reached a disaster level, as a result of firms have now reached the stage the place they must promote many thousands and thousands of copies to make again growth prices.
“The price of building is simply means too excessive,” he stated. “When you’re going to spend over $200 million to construct a recreation, your margins are tremendous tight, except you possibly can count on to promote 25 million models. Except you’re Rockstar, [you] shouldn’t count on to promote 25 million models.”
He additionally famous that “they’ve already been form of transferring the median worth level up anyway”, even when the bottom worth hasn’t been rising, due to using microtransactions and deluxe editions of video games, the latter of which provides additional in-game content material that has “nearly a zero value” to make.
“They stated, ‘Okay, what if we preserve the value after which we nickel and dime you with the DLC, microtransactions, battle move, season move, no matter you wish to name it, and attempt to make up the surplus there?” he defined.
This era has seen the primary situations of normal version video games being bought for $80, with Nintendo launching Change 2 alongside its first $80 title, Mario Kart World.
Not all of those worth will increase have been profitable, nonetheless. In June, Xbox stated The Outer Worlds 2 can be its first $80 title as a part of a broader enhance in recreation costs, however the next month it needed to reverse its plans, dropping the value again right down to $70 “in step with present market situations”.
