Japanese gaming publisher Capcom is stiring the pot by suggesting it may inflate the price of their games to $70. Their citing rising development costs and the following of industry trends as reasons. Gamers aren’t thrilled, but this is likely going to be “the way.”
With wildly popular games such as Resident Evil and Monster Hunter in their portfolio, Capcom’s ongoings carry a lot of weight. What they do may cause or exasperate a trend.
In a translated version of a recent question and answer session, Capcom said it’s pricing strategy may change next month following Dragon’s Dogma 2. To be clear, Dragon’s Dogma 2 would be the first of their new games to cost $70.
“Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is scheduled for release this fiscal year, will be priced at $69.99,” Capcom said. “Industry-wide development costs are rising, and we are considering a price review as one option.
“Ultimately, we intend to take a thoughtful approach in pricing our games while ascertaining user feedback.”
This has led many to believe that Capcom is straight up going to increase the pricing of all its games. And people should feel this way based on Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto’s recent statements regarding the potential price hike.
“Personally, I feel that game prices are too low, ” Tsujimoto said, according to Nikkei. “Development costs are around 100 times higher than they were in the days of the Famicom (NES), but the price of software hasn’t risen so much.
“There is also a need to raise wages in order to attract talented people. Given that wages are rising across the industry as a whole, I think the option of raising unit prices is a healthy form of business.”
Other gaming companies have released $70 games, such as Take-Two’s popular NBA 2K21. So this isn’t exactly new territory. But many fear that Capcom could seal the fate of normalizing the $70 game pricing model.
It appears that the gaming industry isn’t outside the evil grips of economic inflation afterall. Costs are about to get passed directly down to consumers.