Former PlayStation boss says video game prices should have increased every console generation

[midian182]

A hot potato: Former PlayStation US boss Shawn Layden has just given his opinion on some of the more controversial aspects of the video game industry, including pricing. He believes that the price of titles should have increased every generation to cover the higher budgets of AAA releases, partly to prevent stagnating innovation.

The price of video games remains one of the most contentious issues in the industry. Companies want to push big releases up to $80, but consumer outrage and publishers' fear of reprisals have kept the majority of AAA titles at $70.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Layden notes that the price of premium games has remained pretty much consistent over the last 20 years. $70 became the standard for big-budget console games around late 2020, and it had been $60 for roughly 15 years before then.

Layden said the reason prices haven't risen significantly over the last two decades despite game budgets climbing ever higher is "because everyone's afraid."

"No one wants to be the first one to raise the price, because you're afraid to lose traffic. So what you do is you just end up eating into your operating income, your profit margin."

"I think it's going to be harder for innovation to occur at that price point"

"There were more sports cars in the parking lot in the PS1 era than there were in the PS4 era, because if you're selling 20 million units at $60 for something that only cost you $10 million to make, that's different than selling 20 million units at $60 for something that cost you $160 million to make."

Layden believes the price of games should have gradually increased with every new console generation, instead of the industry believing "as long as we grow, even though we're not making money, somehow we can't die."

The former Sony exec said we've now reached a point where game budgets are so high, companies need to sell millions of copies to make the money back. And "unless you're Rockstar, [you] should not expect to sell 25 million units."

Layden does note that companies have been using other tactics to squeeze more money out of gamers, "moving the median price point up." This includes deluxe and collectors editions of titles that can cost over $100. These usually come with in-game bonuses like skins and weapons that have "an almost zero cost" to make. Then there's all the DLC, microtransactions, battle passes, season passes, and so on.

Dear Galactic Citizens! We have received your SOS via skip drone about the pricing. As an organization devoted to making sure that corporations do not go unfettered, we at the Earth Directorate have worked with [REDACTED] to revise the price of The Outer Worlds 2.

[image or embed]

– Obsidian (@obsidian.net) 23 July 2025 at 15:02

There has been plenty of pushback against $80 games. The Outer Worlds 2 was supposed to be Microsoft's debut first-party Xbox game to carry this price, but the company backtracked, reducing it to $70 and promising all full-priced holiday releases would carry the same price tag. Elsewhere, Borderlands 4 and Battlefield 6 will both be $70 despite rumors they would land with an $80 price. But one company that isn't changing is Nintendo. First-party Switch 2 releases such as Mario Kart World are $80.

Layden claims that keeping games at $70 stifles innovation as studios are less willing to take risks. However, it was reported in May that the best-reviewed titles of the year so far were Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Split Fiction, and Blue Prince, all of which cost $50 or less. Coincidentally, Clair Obscur had sold 3.3 million units by its 33rd day of release – and it's on Game Pass.

As we all know, huge budgets don't always equal massively successful games. Concord, which cost between $200 million and $400 million, was so unpopular that it shut down two weeks after launch.Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Skull and Bones, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard also fell short of expectations when it came to sales.

Image credit: Yeneika Quintana

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Former PlayStation boss says video game prices should have increased every console generation

 

[gamerk2]

Alternate take: Cut development costs by not putting in features/fluff that people don't care at all about.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Raising console game prices would have boosted PC game sales (not “innovation”)

Which is why it didn’t happen (outside of console exec daydreams).

 

[noblody]

There are a few factors that affect the price per unit of digital goods.
- number of copies sold
- distribution cost cd/dvd vs download
As an example we can compare diablo II at $50 and 4-6mln copies sold in 5 years for a total of about $150m with diablo IV $666m in five days and more than $1b in the first year

 

[Liranan]

Innovation like Concord?

 

[Xenocea]

It's a good thing, he aren't boss anymore. This is coming from a Playstation fan.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

We'll start with the NES days and say every gen games should have increased by $10:

NES in 1985 - $50
SNES in 1990 - $60
N64/PSX 1995 - $70
PS2/Xbox in 2000/2001 - $80
PS3/Xbox 360 2005/2006 - $90
PS4/Xbox One 2013/2014 - $100
Current console gen - $110

Honestly, how many people would have been paying these prices for games as time went on?

When I was young and had some jobs such as mowing lawns, shoveling driveways and helping with paper routes during the SNES/Genesis days, I bought my own consoles and games back then. I may have been willing pay upwards of $60 a pop for a game, but I generally found it more cost effective to rent a game I wanted for $5 for a few days, beat it and then never have to worry about paying full price unless it was that awesome (like the original FIFA or Madden games, since SNES/Genesis days these games turned to crap).

The days of the PSX - I probably would have passed on needing to pay $70 for a game and for the PS2 days ( last console I actually really played and owned games for) I wouldn't have bothered to get a PS2 nor games if they were at $80.

I honestly don't think the gaming scene would be where it is today in terms of popularity if you were getting gouged at the register for buying a game. Maybe I'm wrong, but I know I would have stopped after the PSX days. Even if prices didn't increase that much and only $5 a gen, at the current generation games would be priced at $80 and that still feels way too high for majority of the trash that is out there.

 

[lonetac]

Fact remains, games are cheaper now than they have ever been when adjusting for inflation. And thats just AAA. When you count indie devs, we have 1000s if not 10s of 1000s of games for a couple bucks. its not like back in the day where you have 3-4 main releases a month costing $60.

I dont really understand folks who get outraged at the price but this guy in this article is an *****. If you make a good game, you can charge for it and people will buy it. its just about the game.

 

[Burty117]

This guy has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, usual high up, over paid and under worked suit who doesn't even know what his own business is about.

Video games couldn't, and even today, 30 years on, struggle to be priced higher because video game quality has actually fallen overall.

If you stopped thinking about money for 5 seconds and actually made some good video games that justified the price, then maybe you could start raising them again.

 

[kira setsu]

Gamers have been paying top dollar for games for years now, these companies figured out that putting one BIG price on the box scares their prey away so they nickel & dime them up the wazoo, which works scarily well.

Every big title pretty much comes in tiers, we'll start with the preorders, then follow with it's base(keep them happy price)of 60-70bucks, and depending on the studio you'll have a few editions y'know, your gold, ultimates, complete etc etc etc, that can go up to silly prices like 200 dollars(or more).

Next up is the ironically super big moneymaker, f2p games! games where allegedly you dont have to spend a penny end up instead breaking monetary records, by pretty much making every part of the game something you need to pay just a lil bit for, another character, another gun, a pretty outfit...

lets not forget battlepasses, all the various types of dlc big and small, the R*/sony move of releasing a game repeatedly, remakes and remasters of various quality.

oh! early access gamess, where you get to pay for a beta and the devs get to scoot by criticisms for wekks to years by pointing to the giant neon "it's still in development" sign while their game(that may or may not ever get finished or a true release) brings in cash.

I wont go into subscription services where you get to pay for something and own nothing, except cool memories I guess?...but dementia exist and those could go poof also so...

pricing in games is broken, it'll probably stay as it is now, my guess is that it'll get worst with how much people love f2p games and gamepass, your precious consoles dont even have disc drives and for the ones that do the disc in the case is useless, these companies are gonna shake us down for every penny with no resistance at all.

 

[winjer]

Having higher prices for videogames would never boost innovation, it would only mean more megalomaniac projects.

 

[Watzupken]

Should game prices go up, I think the answer is not that straight forward. If accounting for inflation, possibly yes. But while prices are creeping up, the quality of games are going down rapidly. Almost all new AAA games run a standard game engine with recycled story or feature some lame live service features. To add to the insult, these games are generally poorly optimized resulting in subpar performance on almost all system configurations. So I find it quite ironic that game developers are asking for more money when they are not even delivering quality products.

 

[fadingfool]

We'll start with the NES days and say every gen games should have increased by $10:

NES in 1985 - $50
SNES in 1990 - $60
N64/PSX 1995 - $70
PS2/Xbox in 2000/2001 - $80
PS3/Xbox 360 2005/2006 - $90
PS4/Xbox One 2013/2014 - $100
Current console gen - $110

Honestly, how many people would have been paying these prices for games as time went on?

When I was young and had some jobs such as mowing lawns, shoveling driveways and helping with paper routes during the SNES/Genesis days, I bought my own consoles and games back then. I may have been willing pay upwards of $60 a pop for a game, but I generally found it more cost effective to rent a game I wanted for $5 for a few days, beat it and then never have to worry about paying full price unless it was that awesome (like the original FIFA or Madden games, since SNES/Genesis days these games turned to crap).

The days of the PSX - I probably would have passed on needing to pay $70 for a game and for the PS2 days ( last console I actually really played and owned games for) I wouldn't have bothered to get a PS2 nor games if they were at $80.

I honestly don't think the gaming scene would be where it is today in terms of popularity if you were getting gouged at the register for buying a game. Maybe I'm wrong, but I know I would have stopped after the PSX days. Even if prices didn't increase that much and only $5 a gen, at the current generation games would be priced at $80 and that still feels way too high for majority of the trash that is out there.

Hence why 8 bit computers were the norm compared with the NES in the 80's UK. Budget games were £1.99 - £2.99 and a full price game on tape was £9.99 with the disc version being £14.99. £50 games were not the usual price even when the Amiga and ST were replacing the 64, Spectrum 48 and CPC464 (generally around half this at £25). Console games used to have the excuse that the cartridges were expensive to make - once they moved to CD-ROM, DVD and download they became easy and cheap to distribute. When the distribution costs shrunk they cannot be included in a general inflation calculation (and given with Steam etc you only pay for what you distribute and not risking having to dump a load of unsold copies into landfill - E.T style) and hence if anything there should have been a drop in price once physical copies became the rarity.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Hence why 8 bit computers were the norm compared with the NES in the 80's UK. Budget games were £1.99 - £2.99 and a full price game on tape was £9.99 with the disc version being £14.99. £50 games were not the usual price even when the Amiga and ST were replacing the 64, Spectrum 48 and CPC464 (generally around half this at £25). Console games used to have the excuse that the cartridges were expensive to make - once they moved to CD-ROM, DVD and download they became easy and cheap to distribute. When the distribution costs shrunk they cannot be included in a general inflation calculation (and given with Steam etc you only pay for what you distribute and not risking having to dump a load of unsold copies into landfill - E.T style) and hence if anything there should have been a drop in price once physical copies became the rarity.

Removal of physical media means these developers saved a lot of money because they no longer need to pay for:
* copywriters
* artists
* publisher and printer for written material (manuals, posters and so on)
* physical media (CD/DVD/Blu-ray/etc...)
* company to make/design and build packaging material
* packaging of all contents into a finished box
* storage of finished product
* distribution costs to ship products
* and anything else that might be required to ship a finished physical copy that I missed

I always wondered why a game that would cost $50 on the shelf as a finished product to physically buy was always priced the same a digital copy. These companies should be making more money for a game than they were years ago when physical media was the mainstream method for delivering a finished product because they cut out a large cost.....but what do I know? Perhaps because I'm not in the business I don't see the whole picture and I could be wrong.

 

[lonetac]

Removal of physical media means these developers saved a lot of money because they no longer need to pay for:
* copywriters
* artists
* publisher and printer for written material (manuals, posters and so on)
* physical media (CD/DVD/Blu-ray/etc...)
* company to make/design and build packaging material
* packaging of all contents into a finished box
* storage of finished product
* distribution costs to ship products
* and anything else that might be required to ship a finished physical copy that I missed

I always wondered why a game that would cost $50 on the shelf as a finished product to physically buy was always priced the same a digital copy. These companies should be making more money for a game than they were years ago when physical media was the mainstream method for delivering a finished product because they cut out a large cost.....but what do I know? Perhaps because I'm not in the business I don't see the whole picture and I could be wrong.

They would still need copywriters, artists and publishers.

They also need storage and distribution systems in order to sell their game. Steam and Epic are not kind to developers.

I would argue the cost has shifted from one thing to another however the budgets of games have ballooned and the profits are crazy so I am only arguing that you only look at it from one side without considering the other.

 

[Eflow]

People are willing to pay historically high prices for historically superior products. It was easy to charge top dollar in the PS1 era because games were noticeably better (at least graphically) every year.

In 2025, your $80 title is competing with AAA games from 2022 that can be bought for $20. And in modern gaming 3 years makes a much smaller difference than it did in 2000.

 

[lonetac]

People are willing to pay historically high prices for historically superior products. It was easy to charge top dollar in the PS1 era because games were noticeably better (at least graphically) every year.

In 2025, your $80 title is competing with AAA games from 2022 that can be bought for $20. And in modern gaming 3 years makes a much smaller difference than it did in 2000.

not to mention you have indie devs just killing it for much cheaper price tag.

 

[MasterAce]

Back in the day, it was one guy in a garage coding and producing art etc. And he single handedly made half of the games on the console. Selling those for 50$ must have been a goldmine.

Now hundreds of developers spend 5, 6, 7 years making a sequel that has to sell ridiculous numbers to recoup it’s cost. And these games are not great, because that lone coder made games that he liked to play, but this team of hundreds has little chance of holding any coherent central idea, as it all gets muddled in the crowd and over that long development time. Plus execs and investors keep changing direction. And they never had a strong idea, they are just trying to hack together all the things they think were successful in some previous games.

The future is in AA games that cost a reasonable time and money to make, carry small central lead that has a strong vision followed through the project.

These AAA dinosaurs lost their way ages ago, and they deserve to die on the altar of corporate greed.

 

[Axeia]

Fact remains, games are cheaper now than they have ever been when adjusting for inflation. And thats just AAA.

On the flip side most of these AAA games also want to sell you a bunch of cosmetics, batllepass, early access, collectors edition, special weapons and what not. But most importantly the expected sales numbers are way higher.
The number of gamers compared to the PS1 era has increased immensely.

Imo the main problem is the same as with movies. They make the budgets far too high and have a poor understanding of what works and what doesn't. No one asked for Concord and they wasted 400 million on it. For comparison they could have made the Witcher 3 for that... 4 times over.

Borderlands 2 was made for ~35m yet borderlands 4 which I'm not even looking forward to because 3 feel kinda flat is 300 million.
Somehow they think just spending a lot garantuees succes. The game doesn't need to cost that much. You don't need to hire dozens of consultants, you don't need to send the development team on sensitivity and cultural nonsense training. All you need is people with a passion for what they're making and you can have something like Expedition 33 or Baldurs Gate, not the biggest budgets but made with passion.

The games don't need pet collecting that isn't part of the core gameplay. Feels more and more like AAA games studios do the same thing as Disney does to marvel movies. Make all the wrong choices no one asked for and keep increasing the budget expecting success. Instead of just trying to listen to what the audience wants

 

[3volv3d]

We'll start with the NES days and say every gen games should have increased by $10:

NES in 1985 - $50
SNES in 1990 - $60
N64/PSX 1995 - $70
PS2/Xbox in 2000/2001 - $80
PS3/Xbox 360 2005/2006 - $90
PS4/Xbox One 2013/2014 - $100
Current console gen - $110

Honestly, how many people would have been paying these prices for games as time went on?

When I was young and had some jobs such as mowing lawns, shoveling driveways and helping with paper routes during the SNES/Genesis days, I bought my own consoles and games back then. I may have been willing pay upwards of $60 a pop for a game, but I generally found it more cost effective to rent a game I wanted for $5 for a few days, beat it and then never have to worry about paying full price unless it was that awesome (like the original FIFA or Madden games, since SNES/Genesis days these games turned to crap).

The days of the PSX - I probably would have passed on needing to pay $70 for a game and for the PS2 days ( last console I actually really played and owned games for) I wouldn't have bothered to get a PS2 nor games if they were at $80.

I honestly don't think the gaming scene would be where it is today in terms of popularity if you were getting gouged at the register for buying a game. Maybe I'm wrong, but I know I would have stopped after the PSX days. Even if prices didn't increase that much and only $5 a gen, at the current generation games would be priced at $80 and that still feels way too high for majority of the trash that is out there.

The latest games like call of duty, borderlands 4 and the latest FIFA or w.e are £100/110 RRP for full editions as is. The prices on the store feel like they are trying to make up for the lack of increases.
I mean they can go that high but I'll be waiting for 90% sales.

 

[lonetac]

On the flip side most of these AAA games also want to sell you a bunch of cosmetics, batllepass, early access, collectors edition, special weapons and what not. But most importantly the expected sales numbers are way higher.
The number of gamers compared to the PS1 era has increased immensely.

Imo the main problem is the same as with movies. They make the budgets far too high and have a poor understanding of what works and what doesn't. No one asked for Concord and they wasted 400 million on it. For comparison they could have made the Witcher 3 for that... 4 times over.

Borderlands 2 was made for ~35m yet borderlands 4 which I'm not even looking forward to because 3 feel kinda flat is 300 million.
Somehow they think just spending a lot garantuees succes. The game doesn't need to cost that much. You don't need to hire dozens of consultants, you don't need to send the development team on sensitivity and cultural nonsense training. All you need is people with a passion for what they're making and you can have something like Expedition 33 or Baldurs Gate, not the biggest budgets but made with passion.

The games don't need pet collecting that isn't part of the core gameplay. Feels more and more like AAA games studios do the same thing as Disney does to marvel movies. Make all the wrong choices no one asked for and keep increasing the budget expecting success. Instead of just trying to listen to what the audience wants

AAA has lost its way. IMO mainstream gaming is in the indie world.

I havent had a AAA game give me good vibes in like 10 years tbh.

Im talking about games in general and the entire industry. We have never had so many games available and be so affordable in the history of gaming.

And I dont disagree with what you are saying. AAA has gotten bloated and they are always adding in extra's to milk us.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Mario kart 8 made over $4 billion in revenue for Nintendo. GTA V has made in excess of $13 billion in revenue from sales alone.

No, prices do not need to increase. Development houses and publishers need to get their out of control spending wrangled and stop wasting tens of millions on "consultants" who hate games, gamers, and fun in general.

Clair expedition 33 proved all these hacks wrong.

 

[ZedRM]

As long as the quality of games increases with the increase in price, I'm ok with it.

 

[AlexIL]

Couldn't care less. I buy them on sale and only if it doesn't exceed 20$ unless that's real hit, then I go up to 30$. Anyway new and flashy game requires grand cardinal PC which I don't have nor plan to. Thanks nVidia!

 

[dangh]

I really dont care. If they make a great game, I will buy it when ill be happy with the price. I can wait a year or 3 for sale. If they would make money this mean they were right and the high price is fair. Problem is, last really great game still remembers ps3, and thats kinda crazy.