£70 - The "New Normal" for next generation games?

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If you submit to £70 a game, You approve and it will be standard. I typically spend £29.99 on a new MP game i want and in Steam sales i pay £5-£9.

If i buy a PS5, It will be for Bluray and renting the absolute best game it has for a week and thats as far as it goes. £70 is basically piracy bait this is what caused piracy before. They best anticipate people will be furiously hacking and trying to avoid £70 fees. And rightly so £70 is an outrageous price for a game.
 
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This gen I usually buy at launch (shopto etc) and sell my PS games (mainly CeX sometimes eBay) works out much better for me. I can always buy them back at a cheaper price later on down the line if I wanted. I’ve kept the big titles (uncharted etc) everything else I am happy to lose max £5-£8 on average or break even. I plan to do the same this gen.
 
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Setting the standard price for games at £70 is pure greed, especially when publishers will likely continue with exploitative practices, such as microtransactions. Some folk will try and justify that price for stellar, triple-A titles eg. HZD, but lets be honest here ... will people be happy to pay that amount for titles that are less well known and more of a risk ? I can afford £70, but I have to admit that it's given me pause about getting a PS5 in the future. At the moment buying an XBox Series X/S with Gamepass seems the best deal by far. Until Sony starts cranking out its first party, big-hitter, exclusives for the PS5 I don't think many people will give them a look in ( relative to the large user base that flocked to PS4 ).
 
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In some cases I could stomach £70 for games I know I'd spend hours on like a Fallout or elder Scrolls, the issue is that those £70 are still going to come with season passes and dlc likely making them surpass the £100 mark. I don't see this mentioned very often, £70 is the base, add on the extras and then it really gets silly.
 
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In some cases I could stomach £70 for games I know I'd spend hours on like a Fallout or elder Scrolls, the issue is that those £70 are still going to come with season passes and dlc likely making them surpass the £100 mark. I don't see this mentioned very often, £70 is the base, add on the extras and then it really gets silly.

That's the issue really. There are very few franchises/games I would say could deliver on £70's worth of content to me. Maybe some things like Forza, Halo, Zelda, Fallout, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto. Especially if it were a digital copy and had no resale value.

Things like Demon's Souls, Godfall, Spiderman, Destruction All Stars don't look to me like £70 top tier titles from what I've seen of them? I guess that's don't the individual though. It'll be interesting to see whether this ~£20 hike pricing impacts sales figures. I suspect it wil especially in the current climate.
 
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No no no! I'm honestly fed up of people saying that digital costs more because of physical. It's utter nonsense. If it all went digital tomorrow do you honestly think that game prices would suddenly come down? Because I would bet my entire years wages that they wouldn't. Digital games cost what they do purely down to publisher greed. It's as simple as that.

I mostly agree. The price of physical copies is influenced by various factors, not least of which is that a physical copy has an actual value attached to it therefore retailers can negotiate lower prices, promotional support or cut the price themselves in order to shift stock or drive footfall (as Sainsburys often did with CoD back in the day).

Digital pricing isn't affected by that, there is nobody except the publisher and storefront operator involved and there is no stock to lose value. The price is set at the RRP and that's that, there's no reason for it to be any cheaper because anyone who is price-sensitive will go and buy the cheaper copy from elsewhere and anyone who isn't will pay the RRP. I don't think it's greed necessarily, more that it's just obvious business sense to make the maximum return possible especially when you're in more control of the pricing.
 
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I don't think it's greed necessarily, more that it's just obvious business sense to make the maximum return possible especially when you're in more control of the pricing.

I'd agree. The issue will be in the near future will be when physical media dies off. Be interesting to see what happens then?

Will the official Sony/Microsoft store become the only place to buy the games from? I can see regulation being required to stop companies from abusing their app store monopolies. Especially when it comes to closed ecosystems like games consoles.
 
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On one hand £70 is a lot, but when I look at the number of hours of enjoyment I get from the majority of games it ain't that bad in reality.

Prices on everything generally only go one way, but it's still cheaper per hour than going to cinema for example.

Would I rather pay less for games? of course, but it won't stop me buying games - with some stuff I may wait longer to pick them up perhaps, but the big titles will still be day 1 purchases generally.
 
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As a reminder Street Fighter 2 on SNES was £70 back in 1992.

The value was easier to work out as it was near enough arcade perfect with many having spent at least £10 already playing the arcade version. To own an actual arcade back then likely equivalent of £2K today. So it definitely seemed to have value.

Then they totally shafted everyone with the much, much better Street Fighter 2 Turbo a year later and at £75 just to add insult. Street Fighter 2 original dropped in value massively straight after Turbo was released.

SF2 Turbo though, the cart held value and still does to this day.

I've been a totally digital gamer for at least a decade, will buy occasional game at full price or close to it like I did with RDR2, I think even I'd have a hard time paying £70 for Street Fighter 6 digital, it's almost enough to go back to physical games and selling them, a good strategy for console gamers if games are £70 with high resale vale quickly after completing.
 
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£70 for a AAA game for me is out of reach, another reason why i have for the first time ever not placed a pre-order for either console especially when i have these game on pre-order via cd-keys for pc instead
Watch Dogs Legion - £39.99
Assassins Creed Valhalla - £39.99
Cyberpunk - £35.99
 
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£70 for a AAA game for me is out of reach, another reason why i have for the first time ever not placed a pre-order for either console especially when i have these game on pre-order via cd-keys for pc instead
Watch Dogs Legion - £39.99
Assassins Creed Valhalla - £39.99
Cyberpunk - £35.99
First time for me not to have a console pre-ordered as well.
Cyberpunk I'll be getting on PC I think.
 
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£70 for a AAA game for me is out of reach, another reason why i have for the first time ever not placed a pre-order for either console especially when i have these game on pre-order via cd-keys for pc instead
Watch Dogs Legion - £39.99
Assassins Creed Valhalla - £39.99
Cyberpunk - £35.99

The PS4/5 prices for the games you've listed:

Watch Dogs Legion - £47
Assassins Creed Valhalla - £47
Cyberpunk - £46

All of course physical, but there is a lot of merit in buying early, selling early and then re-buying once the price drops again.
 
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In terms of RRP that's technically true but physical copies of new games are basically ~£50 on day of release at most retailers.

That's why this £70 pricing feels so jarring.
Isn't that on the retailers though if they don't discount it? The digital versions will be around £58.88 if you buy discounted top up vouchers from places like ShopTo, I'm sure the physical versions will have similar discounts by the time it's released. If a round £60 becomes the normal discounted price then digital would be slightly cheaper for the first time.
 
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Isn't that on the retailers though if they don't discount it? The digital versions will be around £58.88 if you buy discounted top up vouchers from places like ShopTo, I'm sure the physical versions will have similar discounts by the time it's released. If a round £60 becomes the normal discounted price then digital would be slightly cheaper for the first time.

The only people paying £70 for a game, even on release, are those buying digital at RRP via their debit/credit card.
Right now I could buy £70 worth of PSN credit for £59.70. It's highly unlikely that most stores will charge more than £60 for the physical version of the game at launch.
Wait 3-4 months and physical versions will drop even further and it's certainly not unheard of for digital versions to have price drops in that period of time either.
 
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