From GTA 6 $100 Rumours To COD, EA FC Price hikes, Why Games Are Getting Expensive

Video games used to make gamers and top-level executives happy. Now it’s the latter that’s happy most of the time. And why won’t they? They have put some high-priced labels on games and they are selling. Capitalization is winning. Entertainment value? Not so much. And this isn’t ending anytime soon, especially when technology is always developing to deliver us better experiences.

The next Grand Theft Auto game, GTA 6, is also coming in hot with a $100 price tag, rumors in the past have suggested. Other popular games like Call of Duty and EA Sports FC are going expensive too, mainly for their premium bundles. Base games are more of a front-case display of the shops now, which goes for around $60-$70. The real cost is hidden behind them in the form of skins and other in-game items.

What Could be The Reason Behind this Luxury?

These bundles are expensive, no doubt. But $60-$70 price tags on the base game aren't exactly cheap. But there is a justifiable reason, which is the development cost. Quality in gaming has risen in terms of elements like graphics and physics. The visuals are getting too realistic, and the way characters move or interact with the environment is just too natural to be called something inside a video game. So, if GTA 6 comes with a $100 price tag, it is justifiable for it is said to be the most entertaining thing to have happened for gamers. And, of course, that’ll be a visual treat.

But it has stuffed storytelling in games in the back seat. Of course, we have games with good storytelling released recently, like Black Myth Wukong, Elden Ring, Ghost of Yotei, and more. There are add-on bundles here too, like Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree, which adds about $25 to the original game’s cost. Wukong too comes with a Deluxe edition upgrade, which comes at around additional $10, and which gives a player some fancy items to decorate the character.

Every DLC of a game is developed on the same technical foundations as the base. So, even if it is a small-scale update, it is likely to cost a fortune now. Gaming has certainly become a luxury today. Though the ones who are playing don’t really think about it.

Online Game Market Has Become Attractive For That Reason

Online games have become attractive for the top-level executives. If you take games like Warzone, Fortnite, or PUBG, they keep generating monies by providing in-game content. They bring in big collaborations, which keeps the players involved and excited for the upcoming update.

However, things have become really absurd in online games too. It’s just mindless churning of content instead of quality that brought the users to play in the first place. Instead of focusing on things that matter in games, which are mechanics, stories, and other user experiences, online games, through things like battle passes, keep giving out fancy skins.

And, again, players are buying them, throwing a lot of cash on the table. That brings us a solid question. When the top-level executives are making money through additional content, why won’t they lower the costs of games like Call of Duty?

There’s a simple answer for this : greed.