Remember when the PC Master Race used to belittle us console plebs by bragging about how all their games were cheaper than ours? Although that gap has closed over the years, with many AAA games now being 60, SE has now tightened that gap even more by launching Forspoken at 70. 70 still isn't the average yet, but companies like SE are really pushing for it to be, even going so far as to sell a PC game for 70... A PC game... A game released for a platform that owes no platform holder a licensing fee, and releases their games strictly digitally, so money is being spent on pressing discs and shipping them out. Think about that, for a second. Provided that Forspoken sells well, they'll have made even more profit on PC than they would on PS5.
I know there's a crowd out there that defends price hikes by saying games cost more money to make, and that's true to a degree. But guess who keeps getting more and more money? Publishing execs. If you were to tell me that the developers are guaranteed more of a cut or don't get fired the moment they finish the game, then maybe it would be easier for me to accept the new price... but I really don't think so. Hell, you have 2K selling sports games at 70 dollars WITH loot boxes and microtransactions! Can you not see the greed here?
What's disappointing is that just a few months ago, the same company, SE, put out the critically acclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy for 60 dollars. Although, that was across multiple platforms, so maybe a bean counter had a formula that let them be just as profitable at a lower price because it would sell more on multiple platforms. But also take into consideration what franchise this is. It's Guardians of the Galaxy, a Marvel property, which is Disney owned. This means Disney would be getting a cut, so if SE was going to start charging 70 dollars, why not start with Guardians when there was more hands in the cookie jar?
Also, take into consideration that SE has another perpetual money making machine in the form of Final Fantasy XIV. Hot after many awards, the game is currently enjoying its fifth new expansion with subscriptions at an all time high. On top of paying for the game plus expansions and subscriptions, there are still optional microtransactions being sold. They sell JUST mounts for upwards of 40 bucks, not to mention all the pieces of clothing and minions that are five bucks here, 10 bucks here. FFXIV prints SE money. Forspoken would have been just fine at 60.
So I'm curious to see just how well it'll sell on PC, because it won't do THAT great on PS5 with only a few million machines out in the wild. Will the PC crowd hold off, or will they fight back with piracy? Let's also talk about the IP itself. Is Forspoken even worthy enough to be a 70 dollar game? It's a brand new IP, and a risky one at that, placing a black woman into a heavily Japanese influenced world. The draw for the common gamer might have been weak at 60, let alone 70. I just don't see this performing well. I for one am going to pass at 70, and I'm going to make a commitment to buy any game that launches at 70 at a used price instead.
"Well, if you can't afford an extra 10 dollars, then you can't afford video games." See, that's the kind of argument I hate. I get that gaming is a luxury hobby. It's not cheap, but it doesn't have to be price-gouging. Think of it this way. Let's say you buy two games a month at 60. Now you have to pay 70. That's an extra 240 dollars a year, which would have been four more games you could have bought at 60. It adds up. You shouldn't be advocating for these incremental price increases, because at some point, gaming will become too expensive, even for you.
And let's be honest here. The jump from the eighth generation of gaming to the ninth has not been as impressive as the jump from the six to the seventh, when games started being 60. As much as I loved the Demon's Souls remake, I just can't convince myself it was worth 70, especially since Bluepoint released the Shadow of the Colossus remake at 40. As much as I loved Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart, it was no where near meaty enough to warrant 70 dollars. As interesting as Returnal is, I can't see myself paying 70 for what's essentially a really shiny rogue-like.
I don't want the standard to be 70, because I personally don't feel it's worth it. There's just something ugly about the numbers 7 and 0 being together. I guess it's because it's getting closer to 100, and if there's a day that games cost 100 dollars, we're going to be in some serious trouble. We need to seriously question WHY the prices are going up, and we need to look at the record profits their CEOs are making. With all the work place abuse that's being covered up in companies such as Activision, Ubisoft, and now even Bungie, we should be more wary of giving these corporations more of our hard earned dollars. We just need to stop wanting so much. We're becoming frogs in the slowly boiling pot.
I know this blog doesn't have much reach, but I'm hoping maybe whoever reads it will share it or tell a friend, and ask them to hold off on buying new games at 70 dollars. We have to admit that we're being taken advantage of and we need to fight back, because next generation, it could be 80. Then the one after that will be 90, and now we're at 100. Do we really love gaming enough to allow ourselves to be taken advantage of like that? I love gaming enough that I want to do something about it. I hope you will, too. Let's make game prices attractive again.
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