Saber Interactive CEO Reckons $70 Game Prices Will Go Away

70 is to much it would need to be must have for me to pay that for just a bog standard game with no dlc included and even then it's unlikely

So the CEO of the developer and publisher doesn't think that the game should be sold at $70, but they are anyway? Then why should anyone buy it at that price then?

This seems to come up regularly where someone will say a certain price, or microtransactions, or a season pass is too much EXCEPT for our games where it's totally worth it and justified.

I saw he also expects there to be big game droughts whilst the industry corrects itself

Sounds like someone looking to cut corners

Of course its not sustainable in a world where you are paying a 'Premium' to play the game as close to release as possible. Its not competing just with other 'new' releases for your time and money, but ALL the games you can play on your hardware.

Why spend £70 on a 'new' release - often when the game has the 'least' content (as content is often added post launch) and of course when its at its 'weakest' with the worst performance and/or most bugs/glitches. I can buy 2 or 3 games - often less than a year old so not even last gen Backwards Compatible games - for the same price. I don't need to spend £70 to play 'day/date' with some games due to Game Pass. Its not as if I can't find 'something' similar to play for a LOT less money until these games are on sale or in some Sub service.

I'd rather play the 100's of games in my backlog or maybe buy several games in a sale than spend £70 on something I know will be on Sale and a potential buy instead of whatever 'new' £70 release comes out a few months later. Its not as if I am struggling to find something to play and 'must' play the latest game as soon as it releases, I have hundreds of games available to play at 'no' cost.

I stopped going to the Cinema when I could buy VHS/DVD's a few months later for less cost. I stopped buying Physical media for films when I have many options for films - inc options to watch 'new' cinema releases if I wanted.

Games can be a success with selling a million or two copies and in my opinion, I'd rather they made 'games' people want to buy at £35 for example and sell double the amount to be as successful. Not charge more because they want to sell 'less' and still make money...

When I see $70 games now, I usually hesitate, save for favorite franchises (SF, MK, VF, Tekken) and special cases. Most times I wait for sales ($10-$35).

When I was a kid, games were over $70. My brother and I would scrape money together to buy games. We got into importing, too. Japanese games were $80-$120 (SFII worked out to $150).

I am part of the problem. I hardly buy games anymore. With new games coming onto gamepass every 2 weeks, I always have stuff to play/try. I buy like 1 game a year. Forgive me.

We have to charge you $70 to make you think it’s good - seriously twisted logic when there is Pure Xbox giving us reviews … the reality is that they charge us $70 so that when it’s 50% off it is $35

@FatGuyInLilCoat I don't buy 1st party Xbox games anymore because I'm stocked up on Game Pass. I was stubborn about joining for a while, finally giving in around June 2020. What a great service. I used to buy every Xbox ultimate edition at $99. The money wasn't a problem, but hey, why not take the offer?

I still buy a lot of games, mostly older ones, on Xbox. Newer games I tend to buy on PC.

@AlwaysPlaying The price-point decision does not take dedicated players into consideration — they will pay $70 or $50 for the game at launch, players that read reviews are likely to wait for the discount. The decision was made for the random person browsing amazon or GameStop whom would just use price to determine value.

Also keep in mind — inflation. Games used to cost up to $80 during the 80s and early 90s in 90s money. I think the only sustainability might be lowered development costs for wide-release $30-$50 titles.

However just like every other industry I think niche titles and tech show-cases costing up to $200 might be reasonable. (4X games being niche often break that $200 across multiple DLC releases — to be honest I'd almost rather have a up-front $200 game broken up via monthly payments during an open 'beta', and at the end of it you get a physical game on a usb stick with a nice tech tree poster of the final game)

As long as people pay for it, it will continue, just like DLCs (especially in fighting games).

@BBB Reading the original source interview I see that I got the wrong impression. When he says he doesn't want to sell the game for $70, but worries the audience will see that as an indication of lower quality I took that to mean that they were going to sell it at $70 so it doesn't get those comparisons.

So u charge less bet the dlc and micro transactions is a lot making games cost a
Lot now people wages and the tech to make the games unless u are a indie company and the game is good but not next gen graphics and sound balder gate is the best example of a great company who love your game and fans

I will NEVER pay $70 or more for ANY regular edition of ANY game. Ever. Collectors editions I do spring the money for if are nice. But if they do not include the game, that is immediate no purchase too.

But lower costs? Easy solution is hire voice actors that not cost piles of money. I can voice acting for fraction less of what the big names are getting paid. Not joking. I'm available, will do amazing work, even multiple characters if needed, at fraction of big names.

Now if there is union issues with voice acting? That could make it difficult to hire people at lower costs though.

@Lup Exactly. This entire article could been so much shorter with your sentence. That's really lot of major issues in gaming today. People show no restraint, logic, or impulse control, instead should be voting with their wallets. But, I guess in a way, they still are.

@Whybox

“Also keep in mind — inflation. Games used to cost up to $80 during the 80s and early 90s in 90s money. I think the only sustainability might be lowered development costs for wide-release $30-$50 titles.”

While this is true, the gaming market in general was vastly, and I do mean VASTLY, smaller in size. So while they aren’t making as much per copy today as they did back then, the average game is selling 10-100x more copies. That’s the flip side of the inflation argument.

$70 games aren’t going anywhere. If anything, the price will just drop faster if a lot of people refuse to buy a particular game at that price point. We’re not going to go backwards price wise, not for big AAA titles.

I remember back in the 90's video game prices were out of control. Some were $150 plus, I want to say congress stepped in or something along those lines put an end to it. The one I remember the most was walking into Toys R Us and wanting to buy Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and it was $126. So I rented it at blockbuster instead. The good ol days lol

Toys R Us always jacked prices up. PS1 games started the $49.99 for new release trend. N64 titles were at $59.99 usually, which would be $120-$200 with inflation now I think.

Phantasy Star 4 was $99.99 or $89.99 (around $100) on release.

My point is, video game development is expensive; I actually think DLC, micro transactions, subscriptions, loss of manuals, and all these schemes companies conjure is because in a normal market they would charge $200-$300 for almost anything that is not Call of Duty sized sales or indie budget.

Right now it's all subsidized by bankruptcies, whales, unpaid overtime, and a handful of super popular titles.

When Saber is thinking of reducing costs, its likely more crunch time/sweat shop development, and less likely more efficient production flows or lowering CEO pay.

Anecdotally game price increases have reduced what I spend on games to the lowest I've paid since the early 00's. At $40 I bought everything that interested me even slightly on preorder the day after E3. I'd just fill up my cart for the whole year and checkout. Wheee!

Then at $50, I grumbled....but still did that.

Then at $60 I hesitated more, got a little bit choosier in what I bought, bought more things on sale, omitted some things I didn't really need.

Then at $70 the sticker just hit a mental wall. The sticker price just goes "nope, that's not an impulse buy anymore." So I stopped preordering anything at all, stopped buying anything at launch at all, and won't buy until it's at least 20% off. Now I'm back to buying games for $50-54 like the early 2000's. The sticker shock forcing me to wait actually LOWERED my purchase price from where it was when it was $10 cheaper because it eliminated any desire to be "first".

Meanwhile on PSVR2 where everything is $15-40 and often on sale, I bought a bunch of things at full price because it was cheap enough and I just didn't want to wait, bought the rest of everything on great sales and spent 4x more over the past year on games than what I've spent on "$70 games."

Eventually when prices go up enough people just buy less or buy later cheaper, or buy something from someone else instead. You don't necessarily get more money from the same customer and sometimes you end up with less, forcing them to reevaluate how much they want the product at all.

@PhileasFragg Yeah, that's exactly what he's saying. I think it's the same as Zelda TOTK going for $70 mostly so it's seen as "equal" to big western games at the same price, even though they sold it on vouchers for $50 or less than those other big western games.

@FatGuyInLilCoat You're spending $204/yr on Game Pass. The traditional old school casual console owner bought an average of two $60 games a year. You're buying the equivalent of more than 3 games back in the day, or 60% over average. Playing games on GP isn't being part of the problem no matter how elitist "I'm a patron of the arts" people try to frame it. You're paying for games just as everyone always did, and with no resale option. They just found a way to get you to give them more money while feeling like you're getting even more in return. That's good business. Profits in, happy customers out.

@RIghteousNixon I agree. I don't think $70 is sustainable or working but as long as gamers are idiots with low impulse control and preorder they dont' want to give up that whale pricing at launch, but it creates an industry problem of out of touch price points. But I see the short term "hot fix" price future is the Ubisoft model of basically, department store pricing. This toaster is $149.99, even though the same one is $79.99 at Walmart, but we have it on sale, this week for $82.19. Then it'll be $149.99 again next week for 48 hours before it's $49.99 on Ferret Day Tent Sale Spectacular week. Maybe that's a good thing?

There are a few games I would pay £70 for, GTA 6/ Persona 6 being the likely candidates. They have published 10/10 genre defining games. Ubisoft and EA have no business launching games at that price though.

Thinking that Sony, take two, EA, etc are going to lower their prices is certainly an interesting take. I disagree with them on that one.

I also disagree with their reasoning for overcharging for Space Marine 2. Paying $70 and quickly discovering it is not worth that is going to do more harm for me as a consumer than the optics of a $50 release. Is there anyone out there thinking warhammer Space Marine 2 is going to be better quality than Hellblade 2 because it is the $70 game?

Yeah if games were cheap or reasonably priced, I'd be buying a lot more games. Instead, I wait for a game to on sale these days.

This will probably be on my short list for GOTY, looking well worth $70.