Better prepare your wallets – next-gen games might set you back $70 each

If you were born after the ’90s, you probably can’t remember a time when video games cost anything but $60. That looks like it’s about to change, with a $69.99 sticker price popping up for the NBA 2K21 titles for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

That additional $10 for games might slow adoption of the already more expensive next-gen consoles. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing though. I mean, manufacturing is slowed thanks to the pandemic, so decreased demand should mean safer working conditions for workers, right?

The other thing is that the last time games got a price hike in the post-cartridge era was in 2005, when Activision released Call Of Duty 2. Will we get any more content for that additional $10? That depends on your point of view.

For sure, the development costs of AAA titles have never been higher, with most of the costs used to develop the higher-quality assets needed for games to get closer to photorealism. Game devs have been increasing their prices with collectors, silver, and gold editions of games, which either add cosmetic items, powerup bonuses, or early access to season pass content that people would have to pay for anyway. What’s another small hike to consistently turn out better games?

Heck, I’m all for the additional cost, assuming it also brings a quality of life adjustment to the developers that spend their days in a perpetual crunch. The games industry has a high attrition rate, and the go, go, go culture surrounding major publishers is a major factor in that. Hopefully, the increase in the price of games changes all of that.

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