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Sega CEO Hints at Raising Game Prices To $70 in Line With Other Platforms 43

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: CEO of Sega, Haruki Satomi, and CFO Koichi Fukuzawa have alluded to raising the price of specific titles to bring them in line with other AAA titles published by the likes of Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo. "In the global marketplace, AAA game titles for console have been sold at $59.99 for many years, but titles sold at $69.99 have appeared in the last year," Satomi and Fukuzawa said in a financial earnings call. "We would like to review the prices of titles that we believe are commensurate with price increases." Sega is slightly late to the price-raising party as multiple publishers have already shifted top AAA games to the heights of $70. PlayStation first advertised God of War Ragnarok for $70 on the PS5, and Xbox will also price Starfield at this amount for the Xbox Series X|S. It seems as if this is the new norm for the gaming industry.
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Sega CEO Hints at Raising Game Prices To $70 in Line With Other Platforms More

Sega CEO Hints at Raising Game Prices To $70 in Line With Other Platforms

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  • Arrrrr! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Avast maties, sega games be free now!

  • Not me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Friday May 19, 2023 @02:34PM (#63535387)

    On one hand, I'm glad I'm not buying this shit (I was plenty of money on other shit).

    On the other hand, when you look at it as hourly cost of entertainment, it probably isn't bad.

    Realistically, how many hours do you expect to play a $70 game? Divide out the cost per hour and I bet it's practically nothing.

    But the same people who will bitch about spending $70 to play some game that soaks up 50 hours or more of their time will thinking nothing of dropping the same $70 on a night of alcohol in a bar somewhere or a meal out.

    • Also while prices on the online stores are surprisingly sticky on the high end, there are frequent sales, and if you look at physical releases (even if it is just a download key in a box) those follow a more normal price curve downwards over time. So you're only paying $70 if you 'have to have' the latest multiplayer game before the fanbase moves on, if you like single player or couch multiplayer games then letting them mellow of the vine works well.

    • I don't mind paying $70 for a good game that I can play for hours and hours. I mind that the starting price for all AAA games are now $70 regardless if can offer hours and hours of entertainment. For example, Redfall at $70, is underwhelming in game play content and that is IF it is not riddled with bugs right now. As a counterexample, the new Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is $70, has over hundred hours of gameplay, and is not buggy. I would pay for if I had the chance.

      The other thing that bothers gamers is d

    • 1. Good for you
      2. It is. But all entertainment is over priced.
      3. 70. I want an hour for each $1 I spend. So most games end up being only worth $20-$30
      4. See number 2. All of that is overpriced as well. $70 for a dinner and a couple of drinks? No thanks. Hard pass.

      • Wow...you're willing to pay a whole $1/hr for entertainment. Big spender!!

        Just when I wonder how cheap people can be, I get more data that shows they can be even cheaper.

        • Cheap? I want my money to mean something.
          $70 to here a band play for a few hour at a worse quality than I can get at home? With no control of the playlist?
          $70 to go see the latest movie in a crowded room cause your a bit hungry? Sure it sounds great, but the picture is too dark and people could ruin the movie.
          Use the $70 to go to a bunch of museums and get the same experience as looking at a picture online.


          Sounds to me like I am not getting a lot with my money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      And then there's the disappointment of shelling out for a "AAA game" for your PC, only to find it was released with numerous gameplay-killing bugs or is just plainly unfinished.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        Precisely why I absolutely refuse to buy any game on or near release day. Plus I can wait 6 months and get it on sale. Playing anything Day 1 has zero value to me, the game will be the same, or probably better, after a while anyway.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
          The delends a lot on the game,if the experience is based on having lots of other players online at the same time as you with the same skill , Level ( for that specific game). Being there early might be esential for a number of reasons
          1: many players because new and shiny
          2: evrybkdy at the same skill level (xp wise ) . Wait a few weeks or mounths and ( if the game is stil popular) you have got the opsessives which arecallready at max level dominating evrybody or quite a few people that have given up , non

      • That's why it's better to play some buddy's copy first.

    • If you keep it a long time and replay. The "game pass" model that's popular on consoles seems to really be oirented to people who want a new game every week. Meanwhile, I'm probably average $1 to $3 a month because I spend a lot of time on older titles that I've already played once, or titles that are on sale, etc.

      For Sega - undercutting the market can be a way to get a a profit. If they raise prices and they're no longer seen as a more affordable option it could hurt sales. I see $70 and I immediately

    • Most of the games I buy have at least one or two DLCs. I personally wait until they are all available in a bundle and get them cheap, but people who are paying full price are paying a whole hell of a lot more than $70 for a lot of titles now. I'm looking at you, FO4 and GTAV. And hey, both of those titles in particular are basically unplayable. Avoiding the most irritating players and spammers is a full time job in GTA, and even with every unofficial patch you can find FO4 is still likely to absolutely requ

    • But the same people who will bitch about spending $70 to play some game that soaks up 50 hours or more of their time will thinking nothing of dropping the same $70 on a night of alcohol in a bar somewhere or a meal out.

      See, here's the thing...you're absolutely right...sort of.

      $70 for a complete game, I'm fine with that. Really, I am. Even $80 for a complete game is fine with me, for the very reason you specify.

      The problem is that we're not getting complete games anymore.

      First, there was DLC, the successor to the "Expansion Pack". At first, these were the sort of things that were massive extensions on the main game, then companies started slicing off more and more of the main game to sell as DLC later on.

      Then, there were t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Yea d,c is a tricky subject. !et's take Train sim world 3 as an example ( ok the base game was about USD 35 on release iirc) bot holy shit the amount of dlc. But here is the thing, you don't need all the dlc to hva a great deal of enjoinment forva significant amount of time. I'll take myself as an example ( probably not an avarage train sim fan but I don't have the inclination to do in depth research on the topiv for a post here) I enjoy fraight the most, in-fact i find passangers stressfull and stream lo

        • Yea d,c is a tricky subject. !et's take Train sim world 3 as an example ( ok the base game was about USD 35 on release iirc) bot holy shit the amount of dlc...

          So, I'd submit that Railworks (and Train Sim World 3, apparently) are a bit different of a business model. Yes, you get a base game, but it emulates the Lionel physical train sets of old. It's known going in that you're likely to spend more on the game to get the trains and routes you want...but that's half the point - getting a virtual train set on virtual routes. Each of these things has an itemized price up front, so you know if you want the game + [train] + [route], it's trivial to calculate exactly how

      • $70 for 50 hours of high quality gameplay would be fine. The median playtime for all the games I've bought is less than five. How certain am I that a game I haven't played yet would be worth pouring 50 hours into? Unfortunately not very.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tronster ( 25566 )

        ...$70 for a complete game, I'm fine with that. Really, I am. Even $80 for a complete game is fine with me

        But would you pay $130 or more today because that's what the cost should be for a "complete game".
        Video going through the data from 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
        And an article: https://venturebeat.com/pc-gam... [venturebeat.com]

        Most consumers wouldn't pay this much, and begrudgingly are consumers accepting a long overdue $10+ increase in AAA titles from 2020.
        And yet many still claim $70 is overpriced.

        • ...$70 for a complete game, I'm fine with that. Really, I am. Even $80 for a complete game is fine with me

          But would you pay $130 or more today because that's what the cost should be for a "complete game".

          So, I read the Venturebeat article...interesting read, actually...and there were a few things that seemed insufficiently accounted for, at least as far as I'm concerned.

          First, the article *did* touch on some of the things involved, but I don't think they graphed all that well. Price/MB doesn't usefully account for a lot of the optimization and compression required to fit games onto the cartridges of old; in such a case, the additional work to perform those tasks would decrease the number of bytes, while tod

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      You also need to factor in the cost if the hw needed to run the game ( ok arguably a lower /hr cost but still non 0)and the power for device+display.
    • Dividing cost per hour leads to games being padded with mediocre content just to justify the price. I could be doing other things instead of wading through filler content. Make the content worth the price without any filler. Hell, make it a 6-hour uber-experience thatâ(TM)s worth the 70 dollars.
  • My VPN costs $70 for 3 years :)
  • Game have not improved enough to justify the price increase. Especially since they are mostly targeting hardware that hasn't had any improvement since they were release. Software should be cheaper to produce since the tools have only gotten better.
    This is nothing but a reason for software devs to continue to suck and for the software companies to make an ass load of profit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Game have not improved enough to justify the price increase.

      What about inflation? The price has to go up sometime even if what you say is true.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        You are so right ( this might on,y be relevabt for AAA on consoles), I bave the feeling that game devs/publishers would do them selves a favour if they inflation adjusted prices every year instead If keeping prices the same for a number of years and then suddenly raising them by Usd 10+ ( this was before inflation went nuts). Wery few people in general or generalists in particular bothers to make a fuss over a price hike of a few bucs if they ever notice it, but $10+ at once well that can be a nice clickb

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          No idea but you see the same thing with other products as well sometimes. Just as an example when I was out running errands I used to occasionally pick up a couple double cheese burgers at Burger King as I could eat those quickly and easily between locations. Then the price went from $1.99 a piece to $2.99 in one go, a 50% increase in price. Now I find other solutions for when I get hungry running errands and they are healthier to boot.

  • man (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@@@gmail...com> on Friday May 19, 2023 @03:14PM (#63535493) Homepage

    Compared to most of video game history, $70 is CHEAP. Games were like $30-40 back in the late 80's/early 90's, which adjusting for inflation would be ~$100 now.

  • 30 years ago they were like 20 or 25 or more per cartridge in then dollars for beefier consoles. That's more than now.

  • Honestly, the $59.99 price point has held so long that I consider it absurdly low.

    If they wanted to raise it to $80 or $90 I would pay it.

  • I bought Intelliision cartridges in 1980 for $45 a pop. That's $165 now.
  • my life-to-date spend on games. Oh well, no loss there then.

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