Microsoft To Sell Next-Gen Games for $60, Price of Gaming May Not Rise

A company spokesperson confirmed to Kotaku that Microsoft's own first-party Xbox One games will cost $59,99, the same price top Xbox 360 games have.
And for PS4? Sony's U.S. boss of PlayStation business, Jack Tretton, implied in an interview last February that PS4 games would also peak at $60. Oddly, at E3 this past week, Sony reps declined to say what their PS4 games will cost. "I know the pricing," Sony's head of worldwide game development, Shuhei Yoshida, told me when we met to chat about PlayStation.

[Lovable]

Oh Shiiii $70 dollars game... Superstore charge me $80 bucks + 12% HST when I bought borderlands back when it first released.

[Muerte2494]

to require an internet connection to play games on your platform. You need to lower the price of your games. Steam is very successful because of this. You can't ask people to still pay $60 and then impose all these restrictions on them. They is why this business model will fail.

[theWB27]

Agree....if we buy into the digital phase. We have to be compensated by somewhat of a price drop.

[cleft5]

Exactly. Microsoft wants to say there is no difference between digital and physical media and digital is the future. Well if you look at other digital distribution services like Steam you can get Retail games at greatly discounted prices upon and before release.

Also, the price of games drops a lot faster on Steam. Microsoft goes on and on about digital, but they aren't willing to reduce the price of games and they act like they are doing us a favor by keeping games at $60. That is complete bullshit. All they are doing is implementing control without giving us any benefits.

[FlyingFoxy]

Of course they won't rise, pretty sure the same was said last gen..

Look at PC games, usually always the same prices for a new title & cheaper than the console version by at least £10.

[Mikelarry]

may not . IT WILL NOT!!! because i am sorry if it does some of these shitty developers should start closing shops now.

[cleft5]

$60 is already too much to pay when you look at the quality of free to play games and iPad games that are free to $10. I will pay the $60, but I hardly think that price is fair, especially considering all the dlc in games.

[Leio]

Please dont compare Ipad games with console games. They are much cheaper simply due to the fact that they don't require as much time, resources and manpower to make.

10$ Ipad game in the comparison is a straight rip-off compare to console games which are often at least 10-20 times more costly to make.

[cleft5]

The way they where pushing the iPad tablet at E3 it's clear that they see that as a viable game market. I understand the dislike of the comparison but it is valid. Deus Ex: Downfall looked impressive too and that is an iPad game.

On another note, you could buy Tomb Raider for $45 on PC new before the launch and the price quickly dropped on PC. Also, you could get Bioshock Infinite with three other games for free just for buying it. And Sim City, was $27 on one of the Origin stores before it came out and we all knew the stuff they pulled.

I get the dislike for the comparison but everything else remains valid.

[Supermax]

If you do digital it needs to be 39.99 for a aaa first day release.

[Parapraxis]

Many people, myself included expected them to LOWER the prices, considering how devalued the physical versions of XBOX One games will be.
Clearly they don't want physical media any more.
Glad I have options.

[SpinalRemains]

What they're doing is so ass backwards.

If you're going to offer digital only content, then fine, but what they're actually doing is offering digital only content off of a disk to install.

So all their overhead is exactly the same, and Xbone users are forced to pay more, for getting less.

This in between crap is going to kill them. You either cut costs across the board for overhead and gamers, by offering solely downloadable content digitally, or you continue reading the game straight off the disk.

Right now, they can't offer anything for considerably less when they still have to buy the disks and put the games on them for Xbox players to install.

There has to be a compromise.
Not with MS though.

It has to be the dumbest decision ever made, made only due to greed.

Think about how much better they would be if they only offered downloadable games?

Yes they still need a data connection, but they wouldn't need all of this daily check in crap, and players could still run their games if their data con fails.

This hybrid system is just forcing a square peg into a round hole and then putting perfume on the pig.

[UnHoly_One]

I'm actually sort of confused as to why they are going to offer discs at all. I mean, with the internet connection requirement, they have already eliminated customers that have no internet, so why not just go all downloadable?

[SpinalRemains]

The only thing I cam think of, is that they had a traditional console planned deep into development, until some jackass decided to jam all the DRM into the works.

They were so deep into development with blu ray drive that they had no choice but to do it the way they're doing it now.

[Mikeyy]

Probably because a lot of people are going to get nasty letters from their ISPs. I just downloaded uncharted 3 for free yesterday from PS+ and it was 40GB.

Next gen is going to be interesting. Digital works for PC because the biggest games are still only 14gigs. Most are much smaller.

[UnHoly_One]

I don't understand why anyone thinks Digital needs to be cheaper. You are getting the exact same product. The only thing you aren't getting is a plastic case with an art sleeve, and a manual that most likely isn't even a manual anymore, depending on the publisher.

The game itself is identical. So why should it be significantly cheaper?

[Mikelarry]

because you are not paying for a packaged good anymore. the money spent on the games manual, shipping cost, retail fees and wallet should also be removed

[SpinalRemains]

There are no manufacturing costs for discs, cases, booklets, deliveries to stores.

Its incredibly cheaper to just put the game online to buy. Think about it.

[UnHoly_One]

I am thinking about it. Yes all of those things cost money to produce, but it isn't a huge amount. When you are talking about a factory pumping out millions of discs and cases, how much do you actually think each one costs?? Pennies, honestly.

The people saying digital should be 40 bucks or less are flipping nuts, you can't possibly expect me to believe that disc and case cost 20 bucks.

[DARK WITNESS]

i guess you have never worked in a retail environment.

[Supermax]

The disk itself the box the booklet the shipping to a store or retailer the gass it takes to go pick it up