Hey everyone! Syniax here with another blog post/rant. It’s amazing how far we have come in the gaming industry and the gaming community. Games become more and more realistic as we go through the generations. We’ve seen emotions expressed on their face while amazing stories being told and unfolded. As we get with 5 friends and strategically plan out how we will do a raid on a boss palace. How we can get dropped down on a map of 100+ people and take each other out in a huge epic battle royale.

One thing that has been the norm while the gaming industry has been developing games was the price point. We are usually not behind the financials or paying attention to it much because we are playing these video games. We know that of course with inflation, that games will be more and more expensive to make. With the number of people on board to make a triple-A game and the amount of money needed to pay those people. It’s gonna cost a bit of money. In the past two generations for gaming, we have seen the rise of Downloadable Content (DLC) and Micro-transactions to cover the cost or get more revenue into the gaming industry. Whether it’s being done for greed or to support the developers we do not know because we don’t see that break down.

Now we are going into the next generation of gaming, Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series X will be coming out during Holiday of 2020. None of us thought that they would increase the price of the games at any point but it looks like someone will take a stab at that thought. NBA 2k21 will be the first game for the next-gen to be 69.99. Which is weird because it will have its current-gen version out.

Here is why it is weird. Everyone it seems at this point that cared to speak of next-gen and where their projects are taking them said the same thing. If you buy the PS4/Xbox One version of the game. You will be able to upgrade to the next-gen version of that console for free. Some have a limited time on the upgrade. Some say it will happen with a patch and that’s it. But everyone was on the same page for the most part. NBA 2k21 decided to be different about the issue. They wanted to charge gamers 69.99 for the upgrade. I say upgrade because that is all NBA 2k has been through the years… maybe a new mode here and there but for the most part, it comes with polish and some new mechanics if any every year. I can’t speak on this game per se till I do some digging but I feel that if I play a version of 2k during PS4 early years and play the NBA2k20 it will not be any different. In my opinion, I feel that sports games should just be 39.99 and keep it at that.

Now the question is should we expect future PS5/Xbox Series X games to be the same? I don’t want to accept this because I feel some of the current games we deal with will take advantage of that. How do we agree that a game should be 69.99 if everyone will just take that price point and roll with it? How many games that were 59.99 this generation was worth that 59.99 price mark? For example Call of Duty released a game that was 59.99 and it didn’t have a single-player mode in it. Just multiplayer. I think Star Wars Battle Front for this current-gen along with TitanFall had the same situation. They came out at 59.99 yet didn’t offer a full game experience.

Now when you speak of narrative-driven games that Playstation is known for. You can say the same. Most are just single-player experience with either poorly made multiplayer experiences or nothing at all. Also, one of the infamous issues with some story-based games is the story continues outside of the game but to get access to that you will have to pay another 20-30 dollars for the downloadable content. So basically we got an incomplete game? Yet it was 59.99 and don’t get me started with the “games as a service” model.

I don’t think we are ready for the 69.99 price mark in my opinion because we would love to know where that increase will go. Will microtransactions and DLC stop because of this increase or will they just do all 3 in a game to funnel more money into the company. Are the developers getting the good chunk of this money or someone sitting on the CEO throne who doesn’t even know the difference between God of War and MLB be cashing that check? We shall see how all of this will unfold in the future for the next generation. My only advice now is do we need to shop day one for these games? Do we need to pre-order with this next generation? I think I will wait for the price drops since I don’t have the type of coin needed to compete within this growing industry.