Take-Two CEO Believes Games Should Be Priced Based On Playtime

gameranx.com:

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has stated that he thinks video games should be priced in terms of their playtime.

As reported by Dexerto, the CEO made these comments in the earnings call for Q2:

“In terms of pricing for any entertainment property, basically the algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage, which is to say that the per-hour value times the number of expected hours plus the terminal value that’s perceived by the customer in ownership if the title is actually owned, not, say, rented or subscribed to.

And you’ll see that that bears out in every kind of entertainment vehicle. By that standard, our frontline prices are still very, very low because we offer many hours of engagement.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the industry has pricing power or wants to have pricing power. However, there is a great deal of value offered.”

Dexerto points out that among the publisher’s companies is Rockstar Games. Rockstar has recently revealed that they will be sharing the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI this December. That is of course an indication that Grand Theft Auto VI will be releasing soon. Does that mean that Zelnick intends to price Grand Theft Auto VI at a premium?

In fact, we can look at a very recent example of Rockstar’s business practices to assess that. The company released Red Dead Redemption to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch this year, with no online features and no enhancements. Later, a patch was released that improves performance to 60 FPS on PlayStation 4.

That rerelease of Red Dead Redemption came at $ 50. While it is below the longstanding regular price of $ 60, many gamers felt that it was still far too high for what it was. Zelnick defended this pricing, saying “that’s