The Price Was Always Going Up
The $70 price point for new releases did not arrive as a surprise to anyone watching the gaming industry closely. The previous standard of $60 had held for roughly two console generations despite significant changes in development costs, studio size, and player expectations for production value. Something was going to give eventually. 2020 is when it gave.
The interesting question is not whether the increase was coming but whether the size of the increase is proportionate to the actual cost increases studios have absorbed. The answer is complicated and honestly not very satisfying regardless of which side you want to land on.
Development Costs Have Genuinely Increased
Major game development is considerably more expensive than it was twenty years ago. Team sizes for large-budget titles have grown from dozens to hundreds to, in some cases, over a thousand people working on a single project. Each of those positions comes with competitive salaries, benefits, equipment, and the infrastructure to support them across multiple locations.
The visual and technical fidelity that players now expect from major releases requires more engineering work, more art production, and more testing than previous generations of games. Open worlds larger than many older games' entire maps are now standard expectations in certain genres. None of this is free to build.
What the Argument Against Misses
The counterargument to rising base prices points to the additional revenue streams that did not exist twenty years ago: digital distribution (which eliminates manufacturing and distribution costs), post-launch content and microtransactions, subscription service licensing fees, and global audiences that dwarf what was available on previous hardware generations.
This is a legitimate point. A game that sells three million copies at $70 digitally, with no physical production costs, generates revenue that would have been structurally impossible in earlier eras. Whether that additional revenue justifies maintaining a higher base price or whether it should offset the increase depends on decisions made at the corporate level that have nothing to do with individual game development teams.
What You Can Actually Do About It
You can wait. Digital storefronts run sales frequently. Subscription services include major releases as part of their libraries within months of launch. Physical copies drop in price predictably. The $70 price point is real but it is the ceiling, not the floor. Most players willing to wait even two to four months after launch will pay meaningfully less. The experience of the game is identical.
