Get Ready to Pay More: Next-Gen Games Are Heading to $70
Take-Two's $69.99 NBA 2K21 and comments from Sony's CEO suggest $70 could become the new standard price for next-gen games.
If you’ve gotten comfortable with $59.99 as the price of a new game, brace yourself. That number has been the industry standard for so long it feels like a law of physics, but it looks like it’s finally about to move.
Take-Two confirmed this week that NBA 2K21 will cost $69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X. That’s a full ten dollars more than the current-gen version, and a ten dollar jump on the number publishers have clung to since the PS3/Xbox 360 generation. NBA 2K is an annual sports franchise, which makes it a useful test case — these games sell in huge volume, and if Take-Two thinks it can charge more without tanking demand, other publishers are watching closely.
It’s not just Take-Two
What makes this feel like more than one publisher testing the waters is that Sony itself is signaling the same thing. Jim Ryan, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said that Sony’s own Worldwide Studios titles on PS5 will range from $49.99 to $69.99. That’s a wide range, and it’s worth noting the low end still exists — so this isn’t a blanket price hike across every first-party release. But the fact that the top of that range hits $69.99, straight from the platform holder, is a strong signal about where the ceiling is heading.
Put those two data points together — a major third-party publisher going to $70 for a flagship sports title, and the console maker itself pricing some of its biggest games at that same number — and it’s hard not to read this as a coordinated (or at least convergent) shift rather than a one-off.
Why now
The timing makes sense. Publishers have wanted to raise the standard price for years, but doing it mid-generation is awkward — you’re asking people to pay more for the same console they already own. A new console launch is the natural moment to reset expectations. Buyers are already budgeting for a new machine, new controllers, maybe a new TV. Ten more dollars on the software gets absorbed into that bigger spending event instead of standing out as its own price hike.
There’s also the development cost argument, which publishers will lean on heavily in the coming weeks: next-gen games are more expensive to build, with higher-resolution assets, more complex physics and lighting, and generally bigger teams. Whether that fully justifies a 17% price increase is a fair thing to be skeptical about, but it’s the argument we should expect to hear repeated.
What to watch for
The real question now is whether other major publishers follow. If EA, Activision, Ubisoft, and the rest hold at $59.99 for their next-gen lineups, Take-Two’s move looks like an outlier and Sony’s range looks like a ceiling rather than a floor. If they match it, $70 becomes the new normal within a single console generation shift, and cross-gen titles (games still coming out on PS4/Xbox One too) become the interesting middle ground — will those stay at $59.99 while the “true” next-gen versions cost more?
With PS5 and Xbox Series X launches expected later this year, we won’t have to wait long to find out. I’d expect a wave of pricing announcements from other publishers over the next month or two as they finalize next-gen SKUs. Keep an eye on preorder pages — that’s usually where these numbers get confirmed quietly before any official statement.