Former PlayStation boss says gaming price hikes are inevitable, but lack of value is the real issue

[Cal Jeffrey]

Editor's take: Game prices are climbing to $70 and beyond, with publishers blaming inflation and rising development costs. However, players are pushing back against the price hikes because current big-budget games consistently fail to deliver comparable value. Current prices are a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Many players have opted out of day-one releases as big-name publishers rapidly raise game prices. Nintendo's upcoming Switch 2 titles will cost as much as $80, Microsoft is following suit with select first-party games, and reports suggest GTA 6 could push past the $100 mark. The industry uses inflation and ballooning development costs as the scapegoat, but those excuses fall flat. The bottom line is that the value of the average AAA game isn't keeping pace with asking prices. An $80 price point would be a much easier pill to swallow if the game is actually good, but far too many new releases are unworthy of half that price.

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida recently addressed the issue in an interview with PlayStation Inside, calling the situation "an impossible equation." He cited inflation and rising development costs as central pressures, stating that players want increasingly ambitious games but expect prices to stay flat.

"I think it was going to happen sooner or later, maybe not from Nintendo, but it was going to happen eventually," he said of the price increases.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 proves that a small team can produce a gorgeous and, more importantly, fun blockbuster game.

However, are players truly demanding "ever more ambitious" titles, or has the industry, led by corporate publishers, become out of touch with what players really want?

While his tone was measured, the timing and framing of his remarks read like a PR damage-control statement addressing a broader industry trend – a message that rising prices are inevitable and necessary. His comments echo statements from Nintendo and Microsoft, which have each justified recent price hikes by pointing to market pressures. In context, Yoshida's remarks add industry credibility to a line of reasoning that has faced resistance from consumers, many of whom feel that value – not cost – is the missing piece in the equation.

Nintendo announced Mario Kart World as an $80 launch title for the Switch 2, which triggered immediate criticism fueled by sticker shock and skepticism about the hardware's capabilities. While Nintendo called this "variable pricing," critics viewed it as a test balloon – one that floated into hostile air. Furthermore, the idea of charging a PlayStation 5 price point for a system expected to be less powerful struck many as opportunistic, not justified.

While Assassin's Creed Shadows is undoubtedly beautiful and well-received, its budget is magnitudes higher than equally fun and stunning games from smaller developers.

What further complicates the argument is the contrast between large-scale productions and smaller, more focused games. Yoshida pointed to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a visually ambitious title developed by a 30-person team at Sandfall Interactive, as a model for sustainable, high-quality game development – and he's right. The game is excellent and sold a million copies within three days. In contrast, large-scale projects like Assassin's Creed Shadows involve hundreds of developers across multiple studios and cost exponentially more to produce – often without delivering proportionally better results.

This imbalance is fueling skepticism. Remakes, remasters, and live service models – designed to stabilize revenue – have become dominant. However, many players feel that formulaic, brand-first strategies have replaced the creative risk-taking that once defined the industry. Yoshida acknowledged that such games help "finance new games." However, their prevalence raises concerns about how many truly innovative ideas are making it through the pipeline and how much is simply cookie-cutter garbage.

The broader concern is whether the industry is prioritizing shareholders over players. Price increases, microtransactions, and expensive marketing campaigns have become the standard playbook, but they create long-term fatigue. As costs rise while originality and quality stagnate – or in some cases plummet – players eventually stop buying. Current engagement metrics reflect this shift, with many players focusing on their backlogs, replaying older titles, or waiting for sales instead of paying full price for day-one blockbusters.

Oblivion Remastered is a prime example of what a small team on a shoestring budget can do to reignite excitement for a beloved classic.

While inflation and growing development costs are not imaginary, they are also not good excuses for poor game development. There are other solutions to bring down costs, as was recently shown with Clair Obscur and the Oblivion remaster. Oblivion has surpassed four million units and is the third best-selling game by revenue in 2025 so far.

Yoshida is optimistic that generative AI tools, like Microsoft's Muse, could further reduce development costs, especially for smaller studios.

"AI will become a very important tool in the future if developers learn to use its good features," he said. "We're already seeing this today."

However, new tools won't solve the core issue if large publishers continue to treat production bloat and brand familiarity as substitutes for value. The industry should reconsider the cost/value ratio for continued sustainability. If publishers keep churning out unimaginative junk at premium prices, we'll be looking at an industry crash bigger than the one in 1983.

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Former PlayStation boss says gaming price hikes are inevitable, but lack of value is the real issue

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Costs are rising because your game dev studios are horribly managed. You are overstaffed for garbage that doesnt matter, and understaffed for things that DO matter. You spend tens of millions on "consultants" that are the human embodiment of BlueSky. You triple your budget to chase 0.01% better graphics instead of developing your own style. You blow hundreds of millions on "celebrity" voice acting. You dont bother to actually FINISH the games, just the microtransaction systems, pushing out games with less content and fewer features while taking away our access to the older, better titles.

You see arguments for the price of old games adjusted for inflation, while ignoring that all the costs; the manufacturing and shipping of games, the market research for shipments, and the cost of spinning up new copies if a game hits it big later; that have been made irrelevant by the advent of digital distribution allowing for ever growing revenues. In 1985 100k copies of a game was insane, today a million is pedestrian. Games like MK8 sell so many copies that you could make a whole generations of first party games with 0 sales and still make a huge profit.

And above all else, you are STILL raking in record profits. You dont NEED higher prices. You WANT higher prices. And you have the AUDACITY to justify continued price increases. Gotta fuel the greed machine! By god I hope it backfires. I hope every single one of these greasy suits drives their companies into the ground, destroying their stock packages' value in the relentless pursuit to satisfy their greed as their companies replace them with cheaper contract labor.

Stop supporting these companies. Stop buying from them. Stop working for them. Let em rot.

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

Game development teams have simply gotten too large in many cases. Once you get past a certain size (say around ~100-200 people) adding more people rapidly runs into diminishing returns in the amount of work they can add to a project like a game. With a smaller team every dev can know every other dev and communicate directly with them to quickly fix issues and keep everyone on the same page as where the project is going. People who slack off or aren't very good at their job can be quickly identified and either retrained or let go. Once you get past that size you need far more people managing others instead of doing the work, people who can't or won't do the work (but still want a paycheck) become harder to identify, you need slower, more formal communication methods to fix issues, more meetings to keep everything on track, and so on.

And of course the bigger the budget, the more people and more subcontractors involved, well there comes more opportunities for various flavors of embezzlement, and thus more need for employees that watch out for that sort of thing instead of doing work towards the game itself.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Game development teams have simply gotten too large in many cases. Once you get past a certain size (say around ~100-200 people) adding more people rapidly runs into diminishing returns in the amount of work they can add to a project like a game. With a smaller team every dev can know every other dev and communicate directly with them to quickly fix issues and keep everyone on the same page as where the project is going. People who slack off or aren't very good at their job can be quickly identified and either retrained or let go. Once you get past that size you need far more people managing others instead of doing the work, people who can't or won't do the work (but still want a paycheck) become harder to identify, you need slower, more formal communication methods to fix issues, more meetings to keep everything on track, and so on.

And of course the bigger the budget, the more people and more subcontractors involved, well there comes more opportunities for various flavors of embezzlement, and thus more need for employees that watch out for that sort of thing instead of doing work towards the game itself.

Expedition 33 flies directly in the face of the industry's arguments. A game made on a smaller budget by 40 people both looks and runs better then most AAA games, made back its budget in its first day, and on several million sold "not "played"" has made enough to fund the studio's next project. They didnt need 500 employees or $400 million to make it. They didnt need to price it at $100, or $90, or $80, or $70, or even $60. They priced it at $50 and it has been wildly successful.

And it's a good game. Its actually fun, with good characters. Something big publishers have totally forgotten how to write.

 

[NumberNine]

Indie devs are doing just fine. Only the big boys are crying and lookiing for ways to get more for less.

I've got so many great games just waiting for a chance to earn my attention.

Now let's inevitably leave Microsoft and Sony behind.

 

[yRaz]

While I have many opinions on this subject, there is one aspect to it that has been crossing my mind a lot over the last few weeks. I see many games being released that are all broken or incomplete and are often onsale for 50% off less than a year they come off. I think CyberPunk was the breaking point because it was released as trash but ended up being a defining game of our time. I see this as a combination of consumers being tired of being taken advantage of, knowing that games will drop in price shortly after release and that the game is often fixed by the time the price drop hits.

We have seen this pattern so many times now and many of us have a MASSIVE backlog of games that we know we aren't missing out on anything if we decided to wait. Infact, we often have BETTER experiences if we decide to wait than if we buy at release. Oblivion remastered is the first game I bought on release since I bought CP2077. I ended up buying Baldurs Gate 3 on steam sale for like $40 and I believe I paid full price for Space Marine 2, but that was only because my friends were playing it and I'm pretty sure it had been out for awhile. The funny thing is, SM2 got me so into 40k that I ended up buying every other 40k game on steam as they went on sale and I still keep an eye out for the DLCs to go on sale for the 40k games I do own.

And here is the lesson that other devs should learn from Games Workshop with how I buy the 40k games. They have stupid amounts of DLC, each game can end up costing you over $300 with all the DLC included if bought at full price, but do you know what having rotating sales does for the consumer? It keeps them interested in the product. It also provides them with variety across different style of games so they don't "get tired" of it. Then, finally, Almost all of their DLCs add an appropriate amount of value to the game for what they're asking. You want $15 to play as a new race but it frequently goes on sale for less than $5? great, that's 20 hours of content for $5, cheaper than a drink at the pub.

As gamers we obviously WANT games, but we want finished games that don't take a year of updates to fix. So many games are "finished" but then broken up and sold to us in microtransations or as DLC. Or there are other games that I play once and never pick up again. It took me just over 40 hours to beat Assassin's Creed Odyssey. It was a great game, I loved it, but I never played it again after I beat it once. I also never had any desire to 100% it. Frankly, the last 10-15 hours I played it I was getting tired and just wanted to reach the end of the story. I don't remember what I got that for but I think it was like $50 something with tax.

I paid full price for skyrim, I play that atleast once a year. I find myself playing one of my 40k games nearly every weekend. There are games like FTL where I'll start playing it in a meeting or sometimes I'll plan a a BG3 build that I never end up using. I have nearly 400 hours in BG3 and I've never beaten the game but I have like 20 characters I've never finished the game with.

That's where the value is. People don't want broken up games that are sold back to you in pieces(my 40k addiction not withstanding to that statement) or a multiplayer game that's essentially a slot-machine with a different coat of paint. People want something that is complete and that you can comeback to and experience in a different way. I have a rotation of like 5 games I play every year and a few uniques get tossed in there that I play once. Those uniques are things that I've heard about, waited for to go on sale and then rarely end up finishing.

And that's another side to waiting for prices to drop that people don't think about. If you pay full price for a game you feel FORCED to play it to get your money out of it. If I get something on sale and I either don't like it or I like it but not like it enough to finish it, then I don't feel bad about putting it down. If I pay $20 for a game with 60 hours of content but only play it for 15, I don't feel like I lost $20. I can walk from that $20 not feeling like I got ripped off.

Modern consumerism is so predatory that people are thinking more and more before parting with their cash and I think the answer is fairly simple. Make a game that people want to play instead of what some focus group tells investors will sell. I'd argue further that the bar is lower today than it was several years ago. All you have to do these days is release a working game, not something that takes 3 to 6 months of patches to be functional.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

These are great initial comments, which I generally agree with and find grounded without being hysterical.

While corporations are part of the problem, we are also to blame—and I mean that generally speaking. Most of us are guilty of throwing down money for trash because … reasons. This has to stop for things to change, and I think it’s starting to partially thanks to price hikes but also because preordering and day-one bugfests have now officially become tiresome. I can use myself as an example but I know I’m not alone.

I have instituted a $15 price limit on games. I know! Extreme right? But look. First of all, I pay well over $100 in game-related subscriptions, specifically PlayStation Plus. My subscription budget now exceeds what used to be the amount I would spend buying individual games every year. But I get freebies monthly so it’s worth it even if the freebies only wind up being 4-5 games that I’d be willing to pick up and play.

Second, my backlog is so extensive that were I to try to speedrun only the games I’m interested in, I would probably die before I completed them all. I have little lack of content to play so something has to be really good—verifiably good—to pull me out of my $15 price box. The latest one to do that is Oblivion. I was planning to resist and wait for a price drop, but y’all talked me into it (you know who you are). And frankly… No regrets. It’s a spectacular remake. Far better than most, even with its ever-present 20-year-old bugs.

Which brings me to my final point. When we find a game that does us good, we need to reward the developer for not being a corporate @ss and picking it up at or around full price. It doesn’t happen often but I have been known to buy multiple copies of a game because it was good or the devs went above and beyond in supporting it (No Man’s Sky, anyone?).

Same with Oblivion Remastered. I bought the standard $50 version, but I’m about to shell out for the $10 deluxe upgrade. Why? Not because I want the armor and weapon and horse skins. I could care less about that, which is why I bought standard in the first place. No. I’m buying the deluxe because now that I’ve played the game, I want more. I want Virtuos to do more projects like this… Morrowind, pretty please. I’m voting with my dollar. If everybody did that instead of just ditching about how bad a Ubisoft game is then going out and preordering the next one, maybe publishers would get the hint. Probably, but maybe not. They might be too far gone.

The bottom line is we, as gamers, need to stop paying for slop and start rewarding studios who get it right. Unfortunately, I hate to say it but there a lot of dumb gamers with too much money to burn and will jump at the opportunity to throw their Benjamins into the next big corporate dumpster fire that comes along.

 

[m4a4]

Expedition 33 flies directly in the face of the industry's arguments. A game made on a smaller budget by 40 people

I will point out that the studio only is 32+1 devs from what I've seen. And then they did use contract work (typical in the industry and other industries) that isn't a part of that number (a couple hundred names in the credits).

Just giving a perspective for others who wouldn't otherwise see the full picture. This isn't literally a "made by 2 guys" game (like some other indie games that have made headlines for such a feat), but still impressive since some AAA studios have 1000+ devs and also contractors.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Its funny. Once upon a time the Indie studios of today would have been the AAA devs of the past.

How many games that we hold dear from yesteryear were made by teams of 10/20/50 people tops?

As game dev tools keep getting better and allowing for additional productivity per developer, and gamers getting more and more burned by "AAA" slop, Indie and AA devs stand to walk into a real Golden Age so long as they keep their wits about them and don't bloat Into AAA slop slingers...

 

[Watzupken]

In my opinion, rising cost may be due to bloat in the studio with the intention to meet a challenging timeline to release a game into the market. The assumption is more people working on different aspect of the game, the faster they can get it into the market. However, the flip side is that these games are often buggy because of the challenging timeline and fragmented since it’s sliced and diced into small pieces to be taken care of by another team or individuals. We can see most of the games from big game studios of late exhibiting this problem where games are terribly broken but somehow got the green light for release. On the contrary, small game developers tend to release a significantly less buggy game that are cheaper and more entertaining.

 

[AlexIL]

There is no AAA games worthy of mention to play on PS5. There is only bloatware BlueSky themed games that insults logic and reason in every way imaginable. They expect me to pay for their propaganda and be stupid enough to pay more. What a wishful thinking on their part. I sold overpriced PS5 and forgot it.

Windows long forgotten. Microsoft in fact is best advertiser of Apple and all kinds of Linux.

Not even looking at hyped AAAs anymore, garbage. Indie studios release excellent games that is interesting to play and not breaking the bank.

Let them go Ubisoft way. Something tells me Chinese won't tolerate garbage, they in for the sales and know that garbage won't sell for more than the garbage cost.

 

[brucek]

Twenty years ago, in 2005, I was happily buying top choice games at $60. And $60 back then equals about $97 today. So it ought to be a no-brainer to pay $70 or $80 today, right?

Except I don't feel that way at all, and this guy is right, it's because the game I'm getting does not feel as valuable. Back then I felt like I was getting the most entertaining game that developer could make given the state of the art. These days I almost never feel that way from major publishers. I usually feel like I'm getting a pretty crappy game that was designed and engineered first and foremost to get me to pay still more money; second to intentionally waste my time with daily and weekly to do lists so they can brag about engagement metrics; thirdly to maybe do a little bit of preaching about political correctness, or at least avoid anything that might be titillating; and only after all that, somewhere way down the list, to occasionally be fun.

So thankful for the small indie teams who give us better options, and I hope they end up eating the big company's lunches.

 

[Eldrach]

It’s all about investors. Large companies are owned by investors who expects their money to multiply - Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard, Microsoft - they get their money from people who’s never have or never will play games. They put 200 million dollars into a game - then expect at least a 50% return on their investment.
So imagine making a game for 200 million - investors demand 50% return interest, which means you won’t break even at 60 dollars a pop unless you sell 5 million copies. At 5 million copies the company itself is left with 0$ - so they’ll need to sell around 6 million copies to have money just to «start» their new project.
There’s no wonder why they turn to Microtransactions, paid DLC etc.
The big franchises will most likely die soon - it’s no longer sustainable, but again - that will be healthy for the industry - a restart of innovation

 

[toooooot]

They will be losing big money one way or another. They are creatively bankrupt. It is shocking to see that with all of the technology, much bigger industry with that many people working there, they cannot make something like an old Oblivion game created ages ago. No talent, no passion. Activists, ladder-climbers.
They milk their old franchises but each next time, the clone has a bit less fun.
At least there is one positive about it. Small devs are trusted as never before. People browse and support studios that would be very hard to create when so many really talented and big studios existed.

 

[The Talking Tech]

"While inflation and growing development costs are not imaginary, they are also not good excuses for poor game development."

Well said...gaming publishers shouldn't be expecting from people to buy their games at full asking price when they are just delivering less than half the value in their products.