Gaming has never been more expensive. We’re here to investigate why, and help you play more while spending less. Welcome to GameSpot Cheap Week.
Grand Theft Auto 6’s standard edition will retail for $80, and as the highest-profile game to set its price this high, players are likely wondering if other game publishers will follow suit with their AAA releases. That remains to be seen, but at least one industry analyst thinks publishers could be making a mistake if they do.
As part of a wide-ranging interview with GameSpot on how a game’s price is determined, Ampere Analytics’ Rhys Elliott explained how other publishers could make pricing decisions based on GTA 6’s price, believing it opened the floodgates for every major AAA game to be $80.
“So my worry is that a lot of publishers read ‘GTA is $80’ as a green light and push their own run-of-the-mill or new-IP games to $80, when the right lesson is the opposite. What most will (and should) do instead is hold a $70 base and layer premium editions on top–$80 to $100 with early access, cosmetics, a season pass–the way it’s always been done. I’m not saying that’s ethical, but it lets the FOMO-prone superfans pay more while everyone else pays the base, or waits for the discount.”
With the cost of living rising ever higher and gaming becoming even more expensive over the last few years, $80 for most AAA games is certainly a tough sell (though people are also paying for GTA 6’s $100 edition at very high rates). Thus far, we’ve seen Nintendo even hesitate to price most of its games at $80, with the company opting to keep the major release Donkey Kong Bananza at $70.
As the price of consoles continues to rise–next-gen systems could very well eclipse $1,000–the price of individual games will be even more important for the average consumer. If publishers don’t know this already, they’re certainly going to learn it soon.