Retroheadz take a look back at Wipeout 2097, the fast paced racing game that captured the hearts of the Rave generation but does it still hold up today?
Could PlayStation games and consoles see a price increase in the near future?
When PS5Pro released it was only $100 more expensive than the xbox series x. Now xbox series x is actually more expensive than the PS5Pro lol 😆
So yes the Pro will be getting a price increase imminently.
I think it’s pretty much inevitable. I don’t see Sony keeping the same prices while everyone else is raising theirs. The industry has been testing the waters for a while now with these other forms of increases such as ‘early access’ and ‘special editions’ of games. I always wait for games to go on sale so they’re not getting full price out of me.
Well there were articles on how Sony stock pilled PS5s in the states so i think they will go one holiday season without raising the prices in the US.
And death stranding 2 and Ghost of yotei(coming out in Oct) have announced prices of 70 so i think they are going to see what happens when they are the cheapest option this holiday.
Yeah, and i think the US gov also gave tariff exemptions for electronics. Although there’s still inflation to deal with, and logistics cost probably up significantly.
I don't like paying a lot for games, but frankly, this needs to happen if the industry is going to improve.
Back in 2005, brand new releases of PS2 games usually cost £39.99 in the UK, with some going up to £45. Adjusting for inflation, that's between £70 and £80 today.
Then consider that in 2005, many games were being developed by teams of around 40. Nowadays, for games of the same 'tier', you're looking at 500+.
In addition, game development in 2005 tended to take around a year. Many of the big development teams were producing annual releases, or at least one game every 2 years. Average development time now is 3-4 years.
Working all that through, you can estimate that a single game as I've described above 'should' cost FAR more than £70. A quick bit of rough maths:
£40 × 10 (increase in employees) × 3 (development years) = £1200.
Obviously, that's unrealistic, as basic economics tells you that market demand is one of the greatest driving forces behind pricing products. But it still makes you think...
Thank GOODNESS we're not paying more than £80 any time soon...
No thanks. More people are switching to PC gaming since it's more affordable. Graphics aren’t the main concern anymore. Affordable motherboards, RAM, and CPUs can last for years, and upgrading the GPU each generation makes it a worthwhile investment. There are no limitations with PC gaming.
Plus, PC games are cheaper, especially when bought from 3rd party key sellers, and there's no need to rely on monthly or yearly subscriptions
Your argument is fundamentally flawed. Inflation alone doesn’t dictate game prices. Development efficiency has improved, with outsourcing, AI tools, and modular design offsetting increased team sizes and longer development cycles. The idea that prices should scale linearly with employee count and years spent is absurd—games don’t cost 30 times more just because they take three times as long to develop. Your math ignores the actual economic forces at play, like mass market appeal, competition, and diversified revenue streams. Pricing is dictated by demand, not a raw cost equation, and companies balance expenses through digital sales, DLCs, and microtransactions. If games were priced at £1200, the industry wouldn’t improve—it would collapse. The £70–£80 range isn’t some act of generosity; it’s the optimal price point to maximize profits while keeping consumers engaged. Your conclusion misses the actual mechanics of the market entirely.
I agree, and suggesred as much. But I was approaching it from the perspective of the employees, of whom there are now many more, working more years for the same release.
Thankfully, gaming has become more mainstream, which is what has kept the cost low for such a long time. Games now sell in far greater numbers, which keeps the cost low. But as this growth slows (as is inevitable), we should expect to see the cost rise.
Back then, there was Play.com, games going for well under £20. Best to sit back and let games age and pick them up cheaper, but some used games can sell for more. That also pays off waiting for complete editions. It's probably the oldest debate in gaming, the price of games. PS4 games rising to £60 was a shocker. There's definitely a gaming crash coming, yet Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft don't seem to be bothered. They only see £ and $ signs then wonder how it all went wrong.
PlayStation Plus is getting a price rise in Australia and other global regions, with subscribers set to pay a few dollars more on each tier.
Sadly the price increases are expanding to Australia and likely other regions beyond.
Seems like it's best to stack now if you're in the position to do so
I try to stack every time they offer a psn sale that discounts the deluxe tier by 30 percent I find that's the best way to get past the multi year increases but yeah it's sucked feel like everything has increased so much lately across all subs I've cancelled gamepass and a few other streaming services going back to just psn, NSO and Netflix
Same here. I let my subscription lapse since it ran out last summer. If we do the math, is a console really cheaper than a PC? It sucks that I can no longer play Helldivers 2, but it is not worth spending so much on the subscription fee for a function that should be free.
PS plus essential is $80
PS5 is $500
The generation is expected to last 7-8 years, which means you would have spent at least $1060 just to access basic features along with the initial purchase. Not to mention some games being more expensive. There are also the additional controllers you may need to buy once your original ones start to drift. I have 3 DualSense controllers, and all of them drifted. I was able to fix 2 of the 3 by modding them with Hall effect sticks.
I love my Playstation, and I do not regret buying it at launch since I got to enjoy some great games like Ratchet and Clank, Horizon Forbidden West, Spiderman 2, Demon Souls, Astro Bot, and God of War Ragnarok.
The issue I have is that the Playstation that we know today is different from the Playstation we had in the PS4 era. Things are also getting progressively more expensive as time goes on.
Once the PC hardware situation improves, I will be looking to build my own one part at a time instead of getting a Pro console.
@ Divine
The PC situation won't get better. If you want to game, you will need to choose who you want to get screwed by.
Terrible idea to Stack now in my opinion. The raise is not that much for 12 months, so you might as well wait for the 30% sales at the end of year, because you will be saving more money. That's when I'm going to stack like a mofo. I'll buy like 5 years then
You gotta love the attitude people had before: "Price hike! NO, THIS IS TERRIBLE, I HATE—wait ... South America? lol ok."
It starts hitting closer to home and now we're worried. It was always a concern and people should have always treated it that way.
Funny enough, Sony is likely losing subscribers with every price hike, and all they're doing is offering the beefed up service to fewer people. Doubtful this offsets the lost subs.
Haven't had Plus in years, and I don't miss it. And frankly, with the way things are going, I just don't see myself getting into the next generation either. Increased reliance on AI, stagnant gaming experiences despite better tech, untenable budgets, increased cost to consumers, tendency to push GaaS, very long development cycles, weak/non-existent digital rights protections, poor global economy, tariff madness.
It's probably a better use of my time to double down on my other hobbies. Can't speak for others, but it wouldn't be surprising if the market crashes because enough people come to the same conclusion.
PlayStation has spent $4 billion over the past four years, acquiring nine studios, with the priciest acquisition being Bungie.
"Sony had a budget of $11.5 billion for future acquisitions in May of 2024. So, it remains to be seen how the company will use its budget to acquire more studios in the coming years."
I feel like they should expand their current studios strategically. Every studio working on multiple projects at different stages of development. But i suppose they already do this to an extent. But it would be cool for a studio to have output similar to Insomniac
Sony need to restructure their teams so we have an AAA team and an AA team which will give us games like Astro Bot
They already do this.
The issue is creativity in a full game…
Just because somebody sets up a structure does not mean fully fledged AAA games just exist.
It sucks this generation… but we are talking about a level they had set that everyone expects… can not be Microsoft and push out average games, stick a AAA price on it and buy content creators to sell their games.
Sony can not do it or the get massacred by the “gaming media”.
@Xx_Pistol_xX
Why? Seriously, Team Asobi is comprised of mostly the same people still located in Japan and they've already made a hit that is almost universally well received and probably their biggest international seller since Ape Escape. I can't really think of any Japan Studio games with greater comercial success than Ape Escape, Patapon, and Parrapa The Rapper. I loved a lot of their games I can't think of anything they made that I own that was mediocre or bad in design or execution, but nothing landed quite as well as Astro Bot did.
So, I'm not mad anymore. I hope the restructuring of Japan Studio into Team Asobi means we get more instant classic platforming loveletters to gaming like Astro Bot and more well-received creative titles long into their future.
Bungie, Firewalk and Haven…I’d rather have seen them snap up some Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal, Square Enix Montréal with their vast catalogue of IPs. Would have been way better and a lot cheaper.
Deus Ex, Thief, Legacy of Kain, Tomb Raider etc
What a waste
I honestly don't think any of those are system sellers. You see how Tomb Raider worked out for Xbox when the had the timed exclusivity. And I would personally want money put into another Uncharted over Tomb Raider. But that's just my opinon.
Tomb Raider, if done right, could fill the hole Uncharted has left behind while they worked out their next move for the franchise.
Tomb Raider was always more puzzle like and platforming while Uncharted was a full on story focused action adventure game.
Tomb Raider has a lot of history with PlayStation and with the install base I think it would have sold quite well on PS5 if done right.
They just need to go back to Classic Lara or reboot it again into something more Classic like over this “unifying the timeline” bulls**t they’ve got going on which is really just trying to make Survivor Lara a bigger thing.
CDPR would have been perfect because they don't have one western RPG developer. But then again that would have been really expensive acquiring them
I believe there is a legal hurdle too. Something about the Polish government wanting to protect CDPR.
No more large publisher acquisitions, please.
If Sega was an American company, I think I could get behind Sony acquiring them specifically because (a) the current US government administration would very likely impose no guardrails on Microsoft acquiring them, despite their current size, and (b) the odds of games staying multiplatform are much higher with PlayStation than Nintendo.
That's not the case however, so none of this, please
Monolith, Eidos, Ninja Theory, Crystal Dynamics just to name a few, were a total steal. How I wish some were still kicking.
I'm really not sure that simply pumping out more games from more studios is the way to go.
Just focus on quality, a polished product at launch, and solid support post launch.
Yesterday I spent several hours on LoU Part II No Return mode, which just got a content update. A quality game with great support.
Oh man I remember playing this! It was soo good!
Game gets wiped out by F-Zero 😀😆
I only had the demo of this, but damn I loved it - you could blow up the other racers.