PlayStation confirms its PlayStation 5 games will cost up to $70 / £70

Sony has confirmed that first-party PlayStation 5 games will retail up to $70 / £70, mimicking an industry-wide trend towards more expensive games on next-gen consoles.

Launch title Demon’s Souls, Destruction All Stars and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Mile Morales Ultimate Edition will each retail for $69.99/¥7,900/€79.99/£69.99.

The standard edition of Spider-Man, which does not include a remaster of the original game, will retail for $49.99/¥5,900/€59.99/£51.99, while family title Sackboy A Big Adventure will retail for $59.99/¥6,900/€69.99/£59.99.

On Wednesday Sony confirmed that PlayStation 5 will launch starting November 12 for $400 / £360 for the Digital Edition console.

Industry research firm IDG Consulting recently said it believed that more major games publishers would explore raising the prices of their games on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, as development costs are expected to increase.

Activision recently became the latest third-party publisher to price a next-gen title at $70 with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, following 2K’s NBA 2K21, which priced its next-gen version at $70 / £65 and cross-gen bundle at $99.99/£84.99.

Publishers such as Capcom and Electronic Arts have said they will monitor industry trends in regards to next-gen game pricing.

Ubisoft has said that its first wave of next-gen games will not cost more than the current-gen versions, but didn’t rule out PS5 and Xbox Series X releases post-Christmas 2020 coming at a premium price.

Meanwhile, Xbox head Phil Spencer reportedly wouldn’t comment on how much Microsoft’s Xbox Series X first-party titles would cost when asked by The Washington Post.

further reading

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Official: PS5 will release in Europe after the US and start at $400 / £360

Sony's next-gen console set to release in US, Japan and Australia first on November 12

Game pricing has remained flat since 2005, research firm IDG recently told GamesIndustry.biz, whereas TV and movie pricing has increased significantly.

CEO Yoshio Osaki noted that even at $10, the increase wasn’t in line with inflation seen in the pricing of other forms of entertainment.

“IDG works with all major game publishers, and our channel checks indicate that other publishers are also exploring moving their next-gen pricing up on certain franchises,” he said.

“Not every game should garner the $69.99 price point on next-gen, but flagship AAAs such as NBA 2K merit this pricing more than others.”

The research firm’s comments echo those of former PlayStation US boss Shawn Layden, who suggested last month that pricing might have to increase on next-gen consoles due to the increased expense of making games for them.

Speaking during a wide-ranging panel at Gamelab Live, Layden said he believed that the single most important reason why the AAA model is unsustainable is not escalating development costs, but game prices remaining relatively unchanged since the 80s.

“It’s been $59.99 since I started in this business, but the cost of games have gone up ten times,” he explained. “If you don’t have elasticity on the price-point, but you have huge volatility on the cost line, the model becomes more difficult. I think this generation is going to see those two imperatives collide.”