It feels to me like the closer we get to the Nintendo Switch 2’s June launch and the, apparently, $80 games associated with it, the more people are fighting with themselves over what is and isn’t worth it. But at least Sony veteran and previous head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida is free from inner turmoil – he thinks relatively expensive, high quality video games are unequivocally necessary.
“I don’t believe that every game has to be priced the same,” Yoshida continues. "Each game has different value it provides, or the size of budget. I totally believe it’s up to the publisher – or developers self-publishing – decision to price their product to the value that they believe they are bringing in.
Yoshida continues to say that, “In terms of actual price of $70 or $80, for really great games, I think it will still be a steal in terms of the amount of entertainment that the top games, top quality games bring to people compared to other form of entertainment.”
“As long as people choose carefully how they spend their money,” he continues, “I don’t think they should be complaining.”
BACK IN MY DAY! The original Nintendo games cost just about 70 to 80 adjusted to today’s inflation. But at least you got a cool instruction booklet you could read on the car ride home, the full bug-free game (most bugs were fun if you found some anyway), and you actually owned the game with no strings attached. You could actually trade the games with your friends. If they started packing goodies with the games like that again on top of owning the game outright without some kind of shady DRM or license agreement, then yes, 80 dollars could probably be justified. That’s where I was going with physical copies.