With the advent of the new console generation, some publishers have chosen to raise prices by $10 USD for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X editions of their games. However, CD Projekt Red won’t be among them for the next-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077.
As part of the latest CD Projekt Red investor briefing, executive Michal Nowakowski said the Polish company won’t raise prices by $10 as others have.
“When it comes to USD, we launched our preorders at 60 USD and of course we’re going to keep that price for the consumers,” he said. “We’re not going to change it at the last minute to 70 USD. So just to confirm–these prices are out in the market anyway; you can check them on various sites: 59.99 USD and 69.99 EUR is what we’re going for.”
Cyberpunk 2077’s next-gen edition will be available as a free upgrade for those who bought the game already on one of the current-generation consoles. The same is true for the just-announced PS5/Xbox Series X edition of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that’s coming in 2021.
The two highest-profile examples of the $10 price increase are NBA 2K21 and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which are charging $70 USD for their PS5/Xbox Series X editions. In Call of Duty’s case, $70 gets you a cross-gen bundle. For NBA 2K21, $70 is just the normal price for the PS5/Xbox Series X edition of the game.
Before the $10 price increase for NBA 2K21 was announced, PlayStation boss Shawn Layden spoke about how the current AAA games business is unsustainable.
“It’s been $59.99 since I started in this business, but the cost of (making) games have gone up ten times,” Layden told GI.biz. “If you don’t have elasticity on the price-point, but you have huge volatility on the cost line, the model becomes more difficult. I think this generation is going to see those two imperatives collide.”
For more on the subject of rising game prices, check out GameSpot’s editorial, “$70 Games May Become PS5 And Xbox Series X’s Standard.”
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