Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has revealed in an interview with PlayStation Insider that he believes that video game prices were going to rise sooner or later. When asked about how the $80 price tag on first party games from the Switch 2 would affect the market, Yoshida said that he didn’t expect the jump in price from Nintendo.
“I think it was going to happen sooner or later, maybe not from Nintendo, but it was going to happen eventually,” said Yoshida. “We live in contrasting times, where inflation is real and significant, but people expect games that are ever more ambitious and therefore expensive to develop to cost the same. It’s an impossible equation.”
Yoshida also spoke about how more advancements in game development when it comes to aspects like visual fidelity has also led to rising costs of development. He brought up remasters and remakes as an example, where they are often released in order to help bolster operating budgets in order to develop new AAA games. The same is also seemingly true about PC ports.
“Everything in video games today is more advanced and more technologically demanding than ever before, and therefore requires more resources,” explained Yoshida. “Each publisher or manufacturer sets the price of its games, of course, but in the end the heart of the matter lies in production costs. And that’s why industry actors are so keen to diversify their revenues, in order to continue producing the AAA games that the public buys before anything else.”
Yoshida had spoken about the use of PC ports to generate more income for game development in the past. Back in February, Yoshida mentioned how it also helps the game reach a new audience, as well as allowing the market to expand in general thanks to PC gaming being more readily available in certain parts of the world.
“Releasing on PC does many things: it reaches a new audience who do not own consoles – especially in regions where consoles are not as popular,” said Yoshida. “The idea is that those people may become fans of a particular franchise, and when a new game in that series comes out, they may be convinced to purchase a PlayStation.”
When it comes to generating more income, according to Yoshida, porting a game to PC generally tends to be cheaper than developing an entirely new game from scratch. He likened this to being almost like “printing money,” with the additional revenue then being used to fund future projects. “And that helps us to invest in new titles now that the cost of games has increased,” said Yoshida.
According to Yoshida, PC ports also help games hit markets like China, where gamers are more likely to play games on PC than they are on consoles. “China is a huge PC game market,” he explained. “And China is a growing but very small console market. To reach the audience in countries like China, it’s crucial to release on PC. So, I believe PC versions really reach a new audience.”
As for more modern games and how they have been priced, one of the launch titles for the Nintendo Switch 2 when it comes out on June 5 will be Mario Kart World, which will be priced at $80. This would be the highest the base version of a game has cost since Sony raised the price for its first-party AAA releases back in 2020 with the launch of the PS5.