Will PlayStation raise the price of the game to $80?

Xbox announced A suite of rising pricesplus the price of the game that will be confirmed later this year rose to $80. The impact of this announcement is an earthquake and has profound effects in ways we haven't seen yet, and will not only have significant consequences for third-party game prices, but also potentially have significant impacts on PlayStation Consoles.

It's no exaggeration to say it's the most expensive game since the 1990s. Microsoft announced that its lowest-tier console, the Xbox Series S, has slightly more than 500GB of storage space, and costs $380. That's $20 cheaper than the PlayStation 5 Slim Digital Astro Bot Bundle on the PlayStation store. The 2TB Xbox Series X is now $729, which is $30 more expensive than the PS5 Pro.

Xbox Move is on the heels of Nintendo's Switch 2 announcement, not only creating Wave Since the console price is $450, switch 2 itself, but it costs $80 in some first-party games like Mario Kart World. Nintendo was previously priced at $60, skipped $70 points drawn by Xbox and PlayStation At the beginning of this generation (which caused a huge uproar itself) and reached $80 directly. Now, Xbox will follow this holiday, when the first party Xbox Games will also reach that threshold, and it's hard to believe that the price increase will stop.

Will PlayStation Games increase to $80?

Everyone's eyes are focused on Sony to see if it will follow the path of Nintendo and Xbox leadership, but I'm almost certain to announce a price increase in the coming weeks. Rising manufacturing costs and tariffs on the U.S. trade war meant Sony had to raise prices to deal with the economic realities of today’s world.

Assuming that even if Sony is less affected by tariffs than Microsoft, it's almost certain that this is why Xbox raises prices, Sony has more successful hardware and does not raise prices in the competition between Xbox and Nintendo.

But it's not just the console price, but it's certain that Sony will raise the price of its first-party PlayStation games. The company has repeatedly touted the intrinsic value of its gaming lineup, an invaluable experience worth mentioning. Without a world, Sony believes its first-party games are less valuable than Xbox first-party games because they continue to have critical and commercial success. So if Xbox raises the price of first-party games, I think Sony will, too.

Sony's firm belief in the value of first-party IPs even has precedents. The company firmly decided to release Housemarque's final match Refornal, but fans widely criticized the formerly famous Housemarque's criticism as they directly went digital with a great but clumsy experience. Know what we know How much does it cost to make Sony's biggest first-party game?a price of $80 feels inevitable.

Death in sports competitions

In addition to the rising prices of consoles and games, the price increase reflects the opportunity companies can quickly track their long-standing efforts: the turn to subscription services and digital games, and the end of physical media.

Digital gaming and subscription services owned and operated by platform holders such as PlayStation and Xbox earn more revenue than physical media and used gaming sales. That's why PlayStation and Xbox have made such huge investments in promoting services like PlayStation Plus (especially Xbox Game Pass). As far as we know, Xbox Game Pass has not received a price increase (of course it does do so Rises in mid-2024), and with Xbox games coming to $80, given that the money you earn in subscription game passes compared to the first-party Xbox games you purchased, its price tag could also increase in consumer value.

As a fan of physical media, I have been following this trend, even if users are frustrated to send money to digital services and sales, and prices on physical media may take us toward a faster all-digital future than anyone expected.

What does this mean for GTA 6 and everyone else?

The hand folding was restored. Even before the trade war, and since the late Covid-19 pandemic in 2023, the gaming industry had to consider the development costs of falling profits and growth. Questions about whether current pricing for games and consoles are sustainable diverging between industry insiders and analysts, and now they have shown higher costs in consoles like PlayStation 5 Pro and Switch 2 and first-party games.

As first-party companies firmly move towards raising prices, it is possible to confirm whether the final signal of price increases is blip or permanent move that is GTA 6 (GTA 6 (When it finally comes out in 2026).

Analysts’ forecasts start at the $100 Grand Theft Auto 6 price, but quickly gained traction in the wider gaming industry. After all, with billions of dollars pouring into GTA 6 and spending a decade making games, Take-Two hopes to make the most profitable from the most anticipated games of the decade. In the past, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said the game is Price “very very low” The value they provide.

When Rockstar finally revealed the release date for Grand Theft Auto 6, I was very confident it would cost $80 At least. Of course, that doesn't mean everything will cost $80 – games like Helldivers 2 and the most recent Split Fiction prove that there's a lot of interest in lower-priced games, while lower prices fall outside the traditional Triple-A Blockbuster realm – many will sacrifice their game to play on the first day of the game, meaning they can pick it up in weeks or weeks of sales. But, to be sure, the price will only go in one direction in the future, and for many of us, it means we have to be more picky than what we buy and play with.

Matt Kim is an advanced feature editor for IGN.