It’s a safe bet that Bethesda’s upcoming RPG Skyrim will offer enough hours of gameplay to merit its $US60 price tag. However, while speaking to PSM3, Skyrim director Todd Howard shared his belief that while his game will be worth every penny, many other games are not.
“I do think industry-wide we would benefit from more games out at $US19 or $US29,” he said. “I would try more games. Because I’m not going to try a game for $US60. It’s a tough decision.”
This statement echoes one made by Bastion‘s creative director Greg Kasavin when I spoke with him earlier this week. From Kasavin’s point of view, the $US60 price point presents an opportunity for smaller developers like his own Supergiant Games. “As more of these games try to stretch out the experience to justify their $US60 price tag,” he said, “there will be an opportunity for these smaller games to just sort of get in there and deliver a meaningful experience to someone relatively quickly but still provide a lot of value.”
These developers are raising some good questions about how much consumers are asked to pay for their games, and whether the games themselves are really worth it. I’ll have no problem paying $US60 for Skyrim when it launches, but it sure would be nice to see the the industry standard drop a bit.
Games are too expensive (but Skyrim isn’t) argues lead [CVG]
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