A newly-released English translation of an April Q&A with Sega execs contains some foreboding news: It sure looks like the suits are prepping to up the price on the company’s games from $60 to $70, becoming the latest in a line of publishers to leave behind the $60 price point that’s been standard in videogames for a good long time now.
Asked if they “actually plan to increase the unit sales price” of games in the upcoming financial year, Sega president Haruki Satomi and senior executive vice president Koichi Fukazawa (it’s unclear which of the pair in particular gave the answer) responded that “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”.
Continuing, the pair said that Sega “would like to review the prices of titles that we believe are commensurate with price increases” in future. They did say they’d be “keeping an eye on market conditions,” though, which is business speak for ‘we’ll only charge this if people actually pay it’. And while the pair specifically namecheck console games, I can’t imagine they’ll keep those price increases off PC if they go through with them.
What the executives didn’t say is which games in particular could have their prices bumped, but I don’t think it’s too hard to guess. If Sega does follow through, I have to imagine it’ll be iconic series like Persona, Like a Dragon, and Sonic that will be affected (along with any other game that can conceivably be referred to as “AAA” on a C-suite whiteboard). In an answer to a different question, Satomi and Fukazawa even specifically call out the popularity and success of Persona, Like a Dragon, and Sonic Frontiers.
$70 games have been making their way to PC in dribs and drabs over the last few years, with blockbusters like Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Call of Duty leading the charge. On the one hand, it’s fair enough: Games are becoming ever more ridiculously complex, big-budget, and unwieldy, and their makers have to keep the lights on somehow. But it’s still a tough pill to swallow in the, ah, economically turbulent times we live in. Perhaps it just means even more of us will be waiting for sales than ever before?