Capcom stirs the pot, saying 'game prices are too low'

pcgamer.com:

At TGS last week, Capcom president and CESA chairman Haruhiro Tsujimoto reignited everyone's favourite discourse subject: the price of games. As Nikkei (via Switchsoku) reports, Tsujimoto was discussing the topic of rising development costs, where he claimed that «game prices are too low». 

While games from a lot of major publishers have become more expensive in recent years, it's worth noting that Capcom has not followed this trend. For instance, Street Fighter 6 launched at £50/$60 in June, whereas competitor Mortal Kombat 1 will set you back £60/$70. Meanwhile, games in general have not risen much since the beginning of the hobby, despite being considerably more expensive to make. One convincing way I've seen people make this point is by sharing brochures from Toys R Us and other retailers from the '90s, sometimes transposing the inflation-adjusted costs onto those old flyers to remind us that some of us were paying a contemporary $142 USD in '95 to play Donkey Kong Country 2 or $124 for Mortal Kombat.

That said, the reach of games has grown significantly over the decades, with publishers able to sell to a greater number of potential players. So while games have become more expensive to develop, at least at the level Tsujimoto was referring to, they also have the potential to generate more profits for the publisher. 

The global cost of living has also risen significantly over the last year, and here in the UK we're dealing with a cost of living crisis, while Japan has only recently emerged from another recession. This is something Tsujimoto acknowledged, but only to the extent that he doesn't think it will stop people from buying games, regardless of their financial difficulties. 

«Business confidence and high prices