Capcom has suggested that it could release more $70 games after Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is the Japanese publisher’s first title to carry the increased price point.

In a newly published English translation of its latest earnings Q&A session, the company said it was considering reviewing its software pricing strategy following the game’s release next month.

With other companies increasingly pricing games at $70, the Resident Evil and Monster Hunter maker was asked to detail its pricing policy for its next fiscal year, which begins in April.

“Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is scheduled for release this fiscal year, will be priced at $69.99,” Capcom said. “Industry-wide development costs are rising, and we are considering a price review as one option.

“Ultimately, we intend to take a thoughtful approach in pricing our games while ascertaining user feedback.”

While it doesn’t disclose sales targets for individual games, Capcom also said it considers Dragon’s Dogma 2 to “in the million-selling class”.

It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if Capcom started releasing more $70 titles, given its president reportedly said last September that he believed games should cost more to buy.

“Personally, I feel that game prices are too low,” Haruhiro Tsujimoto said during the Tokyo Game Show, according to Nikkei. “Development costs are around 100 times higher than they were in the days of the Famicom (NES), but the price of software hasn’t risen so much.

“There is also a need to raise wages in order to attract talented people. Given that wages are rising across the industry as a whole, I think the option of raising unit prices is a healthy form of business.”

Like Ubisoft, which released its first $70 game in December in the form of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Capcom is relatively late to the trend of raising software prices during the current console cycle.

In August 2020, Take-Two’s NBA 2K21 became the first current-gen game to be priced at $70. The likes of Activision, Sony, EA, Square Enix, Nintendo and Microsoft have since followed suit.

Posted: Feb 20, 2024 8:34 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/capcom-says-it-could-release-more-70-games-after-dragons-dogma-2/