AAA Games are already expensive. $60 a pop isn’t exactly what you’d call economical, especially if you’re living in a country where that amount is already a week’s worth of grocery, or even two if you’re stretching it. Publishers however are pushing $70 AAA games nowadays, and it seems the latest one planning to join the fold is SEGA.
During SEGA’s recent Q&A session for its financial results, company CEO Haruki Satomi and CFO Koichi Fukuzawa discussed its current prices for its titles, as well as its plans to increase them.
“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. We would like to review the prices of titles that we believe are commensurate with price increases, while also keeping an eye on market conditions,” said SEGA in the briefing.
“Also, for titles that are planned to be offered via subscription services, revenue made via contract deals are also included in sales figures, so we would like you to be aware that when these figures are divided by the number of units, there is an apparent impact on the increase in unit price.”
Take-Two had indeed set a precedent on the new price, with Sony and other publishers following suit. Most notable recently is Nintendo with its digital pricing for the standard edition of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. At this time, there seems to be a regional pricing difference when it comes to Nintendo’s latest as physical copies (MDE) for it currently costs Php2,890 at DataBlitz.
AAA titles nowadays get pushed out, with patches upon patches to iron out the kinks after they are released. Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy XV, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor (another $70 game), to name a few have been met with a lot of criticism during their initial releases for the state they were in. So, it does beg the question, with the quality of gaming experience at launch becoming seemingly frustrating nowadays generally, can we really expect $70 a justifiable standard for AAA titles? And in that regard, would you find it reasonable if they did ship their games in tiptop shape?
