It was recently reported that Sony considered releasing some of its PlayStation 5 games for more than $70, but this is a bunch of baloney, according to PlayStation’s top executive. Jim Ryan told The Telegraph, “I can say that that report that we were considering higher prices for first party games is categorically false.”
One of the marquee PS5 launch titles, the Demon’s Souls remake, carries a price tag of $70 USD, which is $10 more than most current-generation games. Ryan defended the higher price point, telling The Telegraph that he believes it is a fair price.
“Yes, yes, I do. If you measure the hours of entertainment provided by a video game, such as Demon’s Souls compared to any other form of entertainment, I think that’s a very straightforward comparison to draw,” he said.
Ryan was asked outright if some of Sony’s future PS5 projects would also cost $70 USD, like the next game from Uncharted and Last of Us developer Naughty Dog. However, Ryan said it’s too early to discuss what might happen down the road.
“I’m not making any predictions about anything that might or might not happen in the future. I’m saying that the reports about discussions that we considered higher pricing for first party games in this launch window were categorically false,” he said.
While some major games have raised prices to $70 for next-gen, including Demon’s Souls, NBA 2K21, Godfall, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, it remains to be seen if others will follow suit to make $70 the new norm.
For what it’s worth, the original Bloomberg report that said Sony considered raising prices beyond $70 did not offer much in the way of specifics. The report only stated, “At one point, Sony discussed going even higher before settling on $70,” and the quote was attributed to no one.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick defended NBA 2K21’s $70 price point by saying, “The bottom line is that we haven’t seen a front-line price increase for nearly 15 years, and production costs have gone up 200 to 300%.”
Before that, former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden remarked that the cost of developing games has increased by 10 times, and all the while, the price of new games has stayed steady at $60 USD. “If you don’t have elasticity on the price-point, but you have huge volatility on the cost line, the model becomes more difficult. I think this generation is going to see those two imperatives collide,” Layden said of the new generation of consoles.
