Ubisoft claims it’s ‘undecided’ if it will raise game prices to $70 in 2021

Ubisoft claims it has yet to decide if it will raise game prices to $70 later this year.

During its third quarter earnings call on Tuesday, the Assassin’s Creed publisher was asked if it planned to increase triple-A game prices to $70 during its next fiscal year, which runs from April 2021 to March 2022.

“In terms of pricing, we’ve been analysing the competitive dynamics of the past quarter and we are still looking at new opportunities, but we have not made any decision yet,” chief financial officer Frédérick Duguet claimed.

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Ubisoft previously said its first wave of games for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S wouldn’t cost more than the last-gen versions, but wouldn’t rule out future releases coming at a premium price.

The delayed Far Cry 6, which is scheduled to launch by September 30, is currently available to pre-order for $60/£60 on all console platforms, but it remains to be seen how Ubisoft chooses to price its key Christmas 2021 releases.

In August 2020, Take-Two’s NBA 2K21 became the first current-gen game to be priced at $70. Other publishers followed suit including Activision with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Sony with selected first-party titles.

Microsoft, whose recent first-party release schedule has been bare, has indicated it won’t be raising its software prices – in the short-term at least.

“Gaming can be an expensive hobby and I see certain platforms going to, in the US pricing, $70 for games,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer told La Vanguardia in November 2020. “The consoles are $500 in US pricing, and I think that’s a heavy investment for people who aren’t every day playing video games, kind of the more casual player or a family that’s balancing many things.”

Electronic Arts also claimed in November 2020 that it hadn’t decided whether it planned to raise prices for its PS5 and Xbox Series X/S games in the future.

During its earnings call on Tuesday, Ubisoft said its “groundbreaking” open-world Star Wars game is in the “early stage of development”, suggesting its release is still several years away

Further reading

3

Rockstar parent says ‘extraordinary quality’ of next-gen games justifies $70/£65 price

Take-Two CEO believes “it's an extremely modest price change”