Xbox controversially raised the base price of its mainline games to $80 in an announcement a few weeks ago. Now, it seems to be backtracking. Good, I say.
A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced that the base price of its Xbox games at retail would hit frankly staggering $80, underpinning what has been an incredibly tough year for consumers and businesses alike with regards to spiralling costs. Whether it’s supply chains being impacted by arbitrary trade wars or sticky inflation from Covid quantitative easing, the market has been relatively unstable for the past few years for a variety of reasons.
In response, various businesses have put up their prices to varying degrees. Microsoft and Sony both raised the price of their Xbox and PlayStation hardware bundles over the past couple of years, and for a short while, it looked like the industry was poised to raise the base price of their mainline games to $80. It started with Nintendo’s Mario Kart World hitting $79.99 at retail, and then back and forth over whether Borderlands 4 would hit $79.99 as well — it ended up being $69.99.
Still too high. Not that I would buy it anyway
Until its sub 50 I wouldn’t even consider it and even then… MEH.
Was highly disappointed in the first title. Not really gonna pick up a sequel for an RPG with 8 armors, 13 weapons, and an alright story for 80 dumb boi points. Even if it has 16 armors. It honestly might have been better as a story driven instead of tryna sell out on their New Vegas history.
They can charge €200 for all I care. I’ll pay for it: A) €5 on Gamepass on launch day B) €15-20 when on sale on Steam in 1-2 years
Hot take, but $80 is a perfectly reasonable price for a “mainline” game.
Back in 1998, I saved all my money to buy Quest 64 for the suggested retail price of $60. That’s $120 in today’s money, and I guarantee you I didn’t get as much game as I will with Outer Worlds 2. Games dipped to $50 when they moved to discs, but even that was more expensive than today once you factor in inflation.
Realistically, an extra $10 isn’t pricing anyone out. All modern gaming platforms are expensive. There are still plenty of ways to enjoy gaming for cheap; they just don’t involve the newest platforms. That has been the case for most of the history of gaming.
Meanwhile games are more expensive than ever to develop. We want developers to get paid, and we want them to take more risks, but both of those things cost money.
