The price point of a lot of video games for next-gen consoles, like Returnal, is being raised to $70. The $10 price hike for select titles has caught more than a few familiar with the industry by surprise, including Returnal developer Housemarque.
The development studio's first real foray into AAA game territory, Returnal has been met with largely resounding success. Fans and critics alike have lauded the game's visuals, atmosphere, and flowing gameplay. The PS5 exclusive was one of the console's best-selling games of April 2021, despite it only being out for the last day of the month.
According to an interview with Axios, Housemarque was not informed of how much Returnal would be sold for until it was publicly announced. The 26-year-old Finnish game developer has historically made smaller, though visually impressive, arcade-style action games sold for around $20.
While development was already underway in 2017, Housemarque's lackluster sales for its title Nex Machina galvanized the developer to go all-in on expanding the scope of Returnal. This was something Sony kept facilitating, after internal demos of the game continuously impressed the company. This led the game to receive a full-scale release above the industry standard to $70, an amount Sony's Jim Ryan believes is a fair price.
The Sony Interactive Entertainment head believes the price increase is justified because of the "hours of entertainment" that other forms of media are incapable of offering, and, for better or for worse, he's not alone. A couple of months ago, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says he believes gamers are ready for $70 games, so long as the quality matches the cost. While that sort of justification is entirely subjective, Take-Two was the first company to start the trend, famously listing NBA 2K21 for PS5 and Xbox Series X as the first game to be sold at $70 for the consoles last fall. Both Ryan and Zelnick have cited video game's inherent replayability, online services, and advancing visual fidelity as justification for the new pricing.
On one hand, the "new" price cap with games like Returnal makes sense, with video games becoming increasingly complex and expensive to create, requiring more and more time, people, and resources. On the other hand, this doesn't necessarily guarantee quality content, and the increased financial investment on the part of consumers could lead many gamers to spurn titles deemed unsatisfactory, as proven by CD Projekt Red's controversial Cyberpunk 2077 launch.
Despite its currently higher-than-average pricing, Returnal continues to be one of PS5's top-selling titles. The only real complaint players have about the game is the omission of a save feature. Housemarque has stated that while its working on a system to let Returnal players save, it's having some difficulty doing so.
Returnal is currently available on PlayStation 5.
Source: Axios
