Video games have been skyrocketing in price despite their declining quality over the years. The price hike to $70 still isn’t satisfying for major publishers as they hope that Rockstar sells GTA 6 for $80-100 to allow them to increase their prices as well.
Amidst this rising price situation, Assassin’s Creed VA Abubakar Salim has come forward to take a stand against rising game prices. He has branded the people willing to pay $100 for a video game “elitist” and called them out of touch with reality.
Why it matters: With rising inflation, anything more than $60 doesn’t make sense for a video game. This will only backfire for developers since the majority of gamers have already called for a potential boycott if such a situation were to occur.
Moreover, Abubakar Salim also said that nobody should have to choose between buying a video game and putting food on the table. This is also why he priced his own Metroidvania project, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, at just $20.
Video game development is just getting too costly, with AAA titles requiring hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, canceled projects cause huge setbacks for the studios, forcing them to recoup losses by any means necessary.
The scalping traditions tell us everything we need to know about players willing to play more than the normal price in order to get their hands on games and hardware.
The majority of fans are already ready to pay more than $70 for GTA 6, and just a single price push will be followed by the whole industry. Even the PS5 Pro sold a lot of units despite being priced at $700.
No matter how much resistance, video game prices are only expected to go up from here.
