$70 Next-Gen Games Aren’t Unreasonable, But Publishers Are Rarely Reasonable

Over the past week, publisher 2K Games made headlines when they announced that while NBA 2K21 will retail for a business-as-usual $60 for the current generation of consoles, next-gen versions will cost $70. What immediately followed was several days of discussion about the sustainability of the $60 standard retail price.

Last June, former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden said that the rising costs of game development that have accompanied every generation are “just not sustainable.” Over the past fifteen years, cinema ticket prices have risen by 39% while cable TV packages have risen by 105%. Yet game prices have remained at $60 despite an increase in production costs of at least 200%.

Until now, we’d not been given any indication that games for the next generation would cost more than we’re used to. But if 2K finds success with the $70 price point, it’s hard to imagine that other publishers would turn down the increased revenue. Xbox’s Smart Delivery initiative – in which publishers are strongly incentivized to make next-gen upgrades free – complicates things as well.

Microsoft has reportedly cautioned developers against charging for paid upgrades from the current generation to the next, in order to cement the Smart Delivery pillar and smoothen players’ transition from one generation to the next. This hasn’t ruled out schemes like EA’s Dual Entitlement which makes next-gen upgrades free but only for consumers who buy the game within a narrow time frame.

Regardless, 2K Games has fired the opening shot for publishers to start challenging the $60 price point. Speaking with GamesIndustry.Biz, Yoshio Osaki of IDG Consulting, a strategic analysis firm that specializes in gaming and esports, said that “Our channel checks indicate that other publishers are also exploring moving their next-gen pricing up on certain franchises.”

Activision was slammed by CtW Investment Group for finding “multiple ways to unnecessarily enrich” CEO Bobby Kotick, who made $80 million in bonuses over four years.

But what many gamers seem to take issue with is whether publishers can be trusted to distribute the additional revenue of a $70 game responsibly. The NBA 2K series is already considered suspect in this regard, as the franchise is not seen as enough of an innovator to justify its annual premium price. Will 2K increase the value of the title in subsequent installments or will it continue to be a roster tax?

The other hope is that increased retail prices will put an end to monetization practices such as season passes, microtransactions and battle passes that have been used in predatory ways in the past. But as history has shown, publishers very rarely demonstrate the good faith necessary to divest themselves of additional income streams.

And the other question is whether publishers like won’t continue to scrape more revenue off the top in order to reward its executives. This concern weighs heavily among shareholders of companies like EA and Activision, both of which have been taken to task for their use of redundant performance and equity awards to enrich the likes of their CEOs Andrew Wilson (EA) and Bobby Kotick (Activision)

So while it’s true that an increase in game prices have been a long time coming, whether they take into effect now begs many questions about where the additional revenue will be going. In an ideal world, this price increase is well deserved and justified, but it’s difficult to trust publishers to use that revenue responsibly, as they can’t even do it now.

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