author: Maciej Gaffke
Video Games Should Cost $100, Capcom CEO Says
You may soon have to pay a lot more for a copy of a video game. Such a solution is strongly advocated by Capcom's CEO.
It is possible that the recent, surprisingly frank statement by Capcom's CEO will resonate for a long time. In a recent interview with the Nikkei (major stock market index in Asia), he said bluntly that the unit price for a video game should be much higher than it is now.
Even a hundred dollars per copy...
Haruhiro Tsujimoto, president of Capcom, said that gamers should pay about $80 to $100 per copy of a video game. Recall that currently the global "standard" is $70.
Tsujimoto's main argument for such a turn of events is the significant increase in the cost of game development and the necessary increases in salaries for employees.
"Personally, I think game prices are too low. Development costs are now a hundred times higher than in the Famicom era (Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo's first stationary console - ed. note), but game prices as such have not gone up that much. It is also necessary to keep raising wages for employees. Given that wages are rising throughout the industry, I believe that raising the unit price per game is a healthy option for business."
Let's point out that video game prices are already quite high anyway - publishers often decide to release several versions of a given title (e.g., with the recently popular early access option), thus raising the cost of purchase for the players.
An alternative to rising game prices are services such as Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus, which give access to a sizable library of games for a monthly or annual fee. If Tsujimoto's words are picked up by other publishers and become a reality, the aforementioned services are likely to see an increase in subscribers (as long as their prices don't also start rising rapidly).
