It's arguably cheaper than ever to play video games these days, but at the same time, the hobby is becoming increasingly more expensive. Yes, we have loads of great free-to-play titles out there, but the price of premium video games has been steadily rising for the past decade, with Nintendo attempting to set a new $80 standard with Mario Kart World.
Microsoft tried it before having to walk it back, presumably because it realized not many people buy its games for $70, while Take-Two was almost definitely toying with the idea of Borderlands 4 being $80 too, before revealing it would be the standard $70. All of these developers would probably tell you that they need to charge more thanks to rising development costs, and ex-PlayStation boss Shawn Layden agrees.
In a new interview with Gamesindustry.biz (thanks VGC), Layden claimed that video game prices have stayed relatively the same over the past 20 years, despite increased development costs and inflation. He then goes on to claim that all the publishers out there right now are "afraid" to raise prices, knowing it would risk losing potential players.
It's worth pointing out that Shawn Layden's claims are categorically...
