Shawn Layden Says Game Costs Should Have Gradually Increased With Each Console Gen

Video game prices should have increased with every console generation to offset swelling development costs, reckons former chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Shawn Layden.

Speaking with GI.biz, Layden touched on the introduction of $79.99 games for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S generation, noting that premium games remained at the same cost for the past 20 years despite game development costs spiking significantly.

I think it’s 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. 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.

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Layden feels the price of games should have been raised gradually with each generation, but says the industry has adopted the thought process that “as long as we grow, even though we’re not making money, somehow we can’t die.” The ex-PlayStation boss also observed how deluxe editions of titles that can cost as much as $100, which are packed with extra content, come at “almost a zero cost for publishers.” So they’ve already been kind of moving the medium price point up anyway,” he commented.

Speaking in the same interview, Layden also revealed that he’s not a fan of subscription models such as Xbox Game Pass, stating they are a “danger.”

[Source – GI.biz via VGC]