Update 17:30 GMT 17/11/23: A spokesperson for Take-Two has reached out to clarify that “Strauss was outlining the overall, general pricing convention for entertainment, in no way did he suggest the need for a new pricing method for core games – and certainly not hourly rates.”
Original version: The price hike from$60 to $70was already controversial, but as reported byExputer, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick thinks the industry should go a step further, and that games should be priced at their “per-hour value”.
Essentially, the longer the game, the more it’s worth. This is a very similar argument to what we’ve seen gamers say for years when something is’too short', as many suggest breezier weekend games shouldn’t be priced at the same point as goliath open-world RPGs.
Of course, not everyone agrees. A ResetEra thread from last year asked commenters to share"Games you felt were too short for their price", but some argued that it’s a narrow way to view things. “I will and gladly do pay $60 for short games, that’s never a problem,” JinglesBuny said. “Five-to-15 hours is a sweet spot for me.”
“I don’t associate value with length,” RockmanBN said. “It’s more like, was the experience worth it?”
However, what Zelnick is arguing is that bigger games should be more expensive, rather than shorter games being cheaper, making the hobby even pricier.
But even he admits that this is an unrealistic goal. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that the industry has pricing power or wants to have pricing power,” Zelnick added. “However, there is a great deal of value offered.”
It’s unclear how much Take-Two’s next big game will cost, that being the long-covetedGrand Theft Auto 6. The assumption is that it will follow the trend of $70 triple-A releases, but we simply do not know yet. Rockstar did just announce, however, thatit will release a trailer next month, so we’ll finally get to see the game after years of rumours and speculation.
We know a little bit about it thanks to leaked work-in-progress dev footage, such as the fact it has two protagonists, a woman and a man, who are supposedly in a Bonnie & Clyde-style relationship. It won’t be long now before we find out how many of the rumours were true.
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