The Price of Playing PS5 Games Day One Is Getting Higher and Higher | Push Square

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There was condemnation of the industry’s decision to transition to $70 new releases at the start of the PS5 generation. For many, this price point breaks a psychological barrier, with software simply too expensive to be justified. Some have argued that cartridge-based software in the 90s was more costly, especially when adjusted for inflation; others have pointed out that budgets on AAA titles have exploded over the past decade. Either way, the prices aren’t coming down.

In fact, they’re quietly going up – but publishers are being sneaky about it. Many are now locking “early access” behind expensive Ultimate Editions of their games, pushing the price of new releases up to $100 or more. This is a trend we’ve noticed become increasingly common over the past few months, with titles like Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero and Silent Hill 2 adopting it as recently as last week.

Publishers sell the concept of “early access”, but really you’re paying extra to play on day one. In the case of Bandai Namco’s aforementioned anime battler, it cost $100 to play the game 72 hours earlier than its “official” release date. To be fair, the arena outing’s Deluxe Edition does also include a Season Pass, so you get added value beyond the “early access” – but this is the very definition of upselling, and consumers are showing up in droves.

Prior to its standard edition releasing, almost 90k concurrent Steam players were logged in on Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, confirming an enormous number of consumers had stumped up for the expensive “early access”. The publisher announced the game had sold through three million units within 24 hours of its “official” launch, but it’s likely a large proportion of those sales came from the Deluxe Edition and Ultimate Edition, which was available to play earlier.

The thing is, this practice used to apply primarily to multiplayer games, but it’s clear single player titles are benefitting from the FOMO, too. Silent Hill 2 was available 72 hours earlier for those