A hot potato: Ubisoft is joining the depressingly large number of companies charging $70 for their AAA games, the first of which will be November's Skull and Bones. The French studio has announced that the price will become a standard for its big PS5 and Xbox Series X/S releases. No word on PC games, though it wouldn't be surprising to see it follow in the footsteps of Square Enix and Activision by charging $70 for some titles on the platform.
In an interview with Axios, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said some of Ubisoft's games will cost the same price as the competition. "The big AAA games will come at $70," he said.
It was back in 2020 when 2K Sports set an unwelcome precedent by announcing NBA 2K21 would cost $70 for the standard edition on the now current-gen consoles. A couple of weeks later, Ubisoft confirmed that all of its games over the holiday period, including Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, would be priced at the usual $60.
Ubisoft never said anything about sticking with the $60 price in the long term, and with the likes of Activision, Sony, and Square Enix all adopting the $70 entry point, it comes as little surprise to see the company join the rest of the pack. The good news for those looking forward to next year's Assassin's Creed Mirage, one of several upcoming AC games revealed over the weekend, is that it will be $50, though it is said to be on a smaller scale than the behemoth that is Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
Ubisoft never mentioned anything about PC games. Square Enix charges the same $70 for Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade on PC as it does for the console version. Forspoken will also be priced at $70 when it arrives next year, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II will be the same price on Steam next month. Sadly, it seems we can expect more companies to start charging this amount for their major releases on the platform, which has a history of offering cheaper titles than its console counterparts.
Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar/2K parent Take-Two Interactive, addressed the $70 price point last year. He said the "extraordinary experiences" and "lots of replayability" offered in NBA 2K21 made it worth the money. The CEO tried to further defend the move by pointing out that the last time the US saw a price hike for games was 2005/2006, so consumers were "ready" to pay more. NBA2K21 has an overall "mixed" rating on Steam and a user score of 2.6 (PS5) and 4.4 (XBSX) on Metacritic.