Former PlayStation Boss Shawn Layden: Game Prices Should Have Increased With Every Generation - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 14 August 2025 / 7,089 Views
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden in an interview with GamesIndustry says the price of video games should have increased with every new generation.
Layden on $80 games noted that price of premium games had remained the same for around 20 years. This is despite inflation and increased development costs.
"I think it's because everyone's afraid," said Layden. "No one wants to be the first one to raise the price, because you're afraid to lose traffic. So what you do is you just end up eating into your operating income, your profit margin."
He added, "There were more sports cars in the parking lot in the PS1 era than there were in the PS4 era, because if you're selling 20 million units at $60 for something that only cost you $10 million to make, that's different than selling 20 million units at $60 for something that cost you $160 million to make."
Layden says the price of games should have increased gradually with every generation. However, the industry has put everything into growth, thinking that "as long as we grow, even though we're not making money, somehow we can't die."
"The cost of construction is just way too high," he stated. "If you're going to spend over $200 million to build a game, your margins are super tight, unless you can expect to sell 25 million units. Unless you're Rockstar, [you] should not expect to sell 25 million units."
The industry has tried other ways to increase revenue by the release of DLC, microtransactions, battle passes, season passes, and more, according to Layden.
"They said, 'Okay, what if we maintain the price and then we nickel and dime you with the DLC, microtransactions, battle pass, season pass, whatever you want to call it, and try to make up the excess there?'" said Layden.
The shift to $80 games has been met with pushback. Microsoft had initially stated they would charge $80 for The Outer Worlds 2, however, they rolled that back and it will now cost $70.
Mario Kart World is priced at $80, however, you can purchase a Switch 2 bundle with the game for $500, which is $50 more than the price of the console by itself.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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And yet, developers and publishers are constantly posting higher than ever profits and revenues...
Why? Volume of sales.
A game can be $50 USD, if it's shifting 20 million copies (Which is more than plausible for some games!) That's still a Billion dollars.
Make good games, make lots of money... That's the true secret to success, not higher sticker prices.
You are absolutely correct. This is about a desire to make as much money as possible, not make a profit or even become ultra-rich. They (as in any company, not just Sony) could charge $39.99 on the vast majority of their games and become ultra-rich these days. They don't want to be ultra-rich. They want to be AS RICH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE AND NEVER STOP GETTING RICHER... thus, $79.99.
This is unfortunately the sad reality of video games becoming mainstream. Sure games are better now than they've ever been but it also attracts the most parasitic executives.
The total volume of sales actually has not been increasing. Sure, some games put up huge numbers, but titles that sell 20M+ copies are extremely rare, numbering in the dozens. If we look at tie ratios, the number of games sold per console has remained relatively steady over time, typically 9-12 games per system. Meanwhile, the console market, which is still the primary driver of "AAA" game sales, hasn't really grown any since the PS2 days.
I'd argue that the primary driver of increased profits has been from subscriptions as well as the aggressive monetization of games in the form of DLC, microtransactions, battle passes, etc.
Edited for typos
Edited again to remove out of date sales data
The PS4 + PS5 combined has sold close to 3b units of software so I have no idea where you are getting your numbers from, and subsequently your conclusions are very wrong.
The PS4 official software sales only go up to September 2020. So the number on this website is missing almost 5 years of sales.
I got it straight from Sony's website: https://sonyinteractive.com/en/our-company/business-data-sales/
That's a mistake, it's actually 2,807m.
The also list the PS5 as sold 56m+
They publish the sales every quarter in their accounts
If you scroll down past that number you can see it only includes software from the quarter PS5 released onwards, when they started combining software. That's q3 FY2020.
You need to add the PS4 only humber to that, from 2013 to 2020. They missed that number out by mistake presumably.
Gotcha. I guess they need to update that entry.
Still, my point stands regarding software tie ratios. On average, they aren't substantially higher than they were in generations past. It's not a proportionally massive increase in software sales over time for the console market as a whole. Certainly not enough to offset the growth in budgets.
BTW, I noticed you called another user a "fanboy" earlier. As a mod, I thought I'd let you know just in case you're not aware that it's against site rules to use that term to refer to other users or as a generalization of a fanbase.
I know you’re a fanboy so your first thought is to insult Sony but MS literally laid off people across multiple CoD teams.
It’s applicable to basically every major corporation.
How can I be a fanboy if I own all consoles?
Both parties this generation have laid off equal amount of people and in actual facts Sony has cancelled more games then Ms this year with majority from Sony have been live service ones.. only Nintendo haven't done layoffs
No, Microsoft had laid off around 4x as many people across Xbox, ABK and Bethesda. They laid off 1900 in January 2024 which is more than Sony has laid off across the the last 10 years, and that was just one of four major layoffs at xbox in the last 3 years.
I also own all platforms... But I still have my favorite. (PC)
That's like someone making homophobic jokes, but then saying "I am not homophobic, my friend is gay".
Everyone has a bias, everyone... It's important to recognize that.
In saying that, I don't consider your bias to be an extreme one, if anything my PC bias is larger than your preferences... And having a bias is not wrong to actually have anyway.
Just a heads up... Do not call others a fanboy.
Let's map out his plan.
PS1 Games: $40
PS2 Games: $50
PS3 Games: $60
PS4 Games: $70
PS5 Games: $80
So things are not that far off from where he thinks they should be.
That's just about the only way I agree with it.
Because if the standard over time would've been
PS1: $50
PS2: $60
PS3: $70
PS4: $80
PS5: $90
That would've been awful. The standard for PlayStation has been
PS1 & PS2: $50
PS3 & PS4: $60
PS5: $70 (possibly soon to be $80).
Indeed, it also has been up to developers more, as I do remember £55 games on PS2 and £65 games on PS4, even if Sony stuck to the 50/60 thing. I think it's sadly unlikely this time around for Sony to stick with $70 for 2 gens, even though we know they can afford to. But I do not think Sony will increase their prices this gen.
ill never forget mortal Kombat trilogy and Doom 64 on N64 for $74.99
Again worth it, legendary ground breaking game.
It was £55 in the UK at RRP, which would be the equivalent of $88 at the exchange rate in December 1998.
It also sold out and was impossible to buy for weeks(digital haters should think about those days)
But worth it
As if this would stop publishers from employing dlc, season passes, microtransactions, etc?
Fuck off Shawn
The idea that prices must 1:1 correlate with increased budgets isn't a good one IMO... In the long run it means people playing less games and few developers able to survive in the industry.
The question should be what price can our product make a good profit at? If you expect to make a strong profit at $60, you better have a great reason to be charging $80 or more.
I think the only $70 games I've bought have been Tears of the Kingdom and God of War Ragnarok. Whilst some games and franchises can get away with it, I feel most cannot.
Less people will buy games if the entry price keeps increasing. What's the cut off point if he thinks prices should go up each gen? $70 is already my cut off and I'm not paying more than that.
Shawn is in denial if he thinks microtransactions would have or will be lessened with higher game prices.
If from the PS1 era games just naturally increased like $5 or $10 each gen people will less inclined to moan about price increases as it's just expected per gen. We would be used to it.
Many publishers and developers didn't do that even if game prices in reality have increased by $5 or so each gen. what he's saying it should have been a set thing of $10 to something like that per gen but this means we'd now be paying for $90 games.
According to a quick search, FF7 released at RRP of £50 in the UK, 12, 13 and 15 were all the same. So when you get FF16 releasing at £70, that's quite the leap. (now no one was buying those games for that much, high street competition dragged it down a lot but high street competitive pricing is dead now). But if each game was just a little more, PS1 eara games £55, PS2, £55, PS3 £60, PS4, £65 and PS5 £70, it would be less of an impact.
But you are right on the latter, in the end greed corporations and their mtx would have happened anyway, so we'd be paying more and spending more on in game content.
I don't think he's making any claims about what will come to be. However, there would definitely have been less pressure for microtransactions etc. had game prices increased, and it would probably have had an effect. Yes, we would still have additional costs, but maybe they would cost less, some games that have them might not, etc.
no GTA6 for you!
Shop abroad. I got the Hong Kong cart version of Mariokart World for £55. Apart from some text on the rear cover, it is identical to the UK version.
Nobody ever asked for game budgets to balloon to unsustainable levels. Also, customers shouldnt have to care that game devs cant properly budget their projects thus the "need" to overcharge for them.
Gaming historically has been a great value proposition for cost vs amount of enrertainment time derived, but this overcharging microtransactions not owning games only renting etc, all of that will eventually erode all the best parts of why gaming has thrived for the past 3 to 4 decades
He's not entirely wrong. You can't expect the best visuals, the best game physics and so on with a big world and and expect the game to cost cheap. Having all that cost alot of money .
They can only do what the market allows them to do.
Well, he does kinda have a point. The steady increase in hardware prices over time has rarely been met with widespread consternation outside particularly expensive systems (like the PS3). Nobody complains that the latest state-of-the-art home consoles don't launch at $200-300 anymore. 30+ years ago a $400 price tag made systems dead on arrival or at best some niche enthusiast product. Now it's considered reasonable.
But software prices have remained relatively steady over time. Unlike hardware, the games themselves didn't keep up with inflation. Sticker prices actually dropped after the switch from cartridges to discs (since discs were cheaper), and the price of disc-based games barely budged for most of their existence. Prior to this generation, the last time we had a price bump was 2005-06 (which some people complained about 20 years ago). The industry got people used to paying a flat $60 for new releases for two whole generations lasting 14-15 years in total. It was normalized so much that, rather than the relative indifference they have towards steadily increasing hardware prices, they feel like they're getting stiffed. If they had been gradually eased into $70-80 prices, the reaction probably would have been less angry because software prices steadily rising over time would have been the thing that was normalized.
Games didn't need to partly because the media became significantly cheaper, carts vs CDs.
Gamecube had significantly more games than N64 because they were able to release software on cheap media.
One of the reasons development costs have become so large over time was to support MTX. Make games bigger, make games longer, make players grind for hours. He's blowing smoke avoiding that the c-suite were the ones that caused a huge spike in the production cost of games.
Higher prices eventually only make piracy or cheaper AA, indie, and free-to-play games more appealing. I haven’t bought a single PS5 game at the $70/80€ launch price. They’ve already lost a lot of potential revenue from me as a customer, and once the initial hype fades, I sometimes forget about those games entirely. Titles like Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarök, or Horizon Forbidden West, for example—I haven’t purchased any of them yet, but if they had launched at $60, I probably would have picked up all three on launch.
I've only purchased 3 games on day one since the prices increased to $70. Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, Elden Ring and Final Fantasy XVI. Rift Apart was amazing. Elden Ring is a masterpiece. FFXVI was a disappointment.
I have however purchased plenty of games that still launch at $50 or $60. But $70 is too much.
And this is why he's a FORMER PlayStation boss.
Fair or not, when you're making billions in net profits, things like this will only serve to infuriate
He wanted a sports car orrr…?
This guy is exactly what the industry doesn't need. One sure fire way to kill off the industry is to make everything more expensive every generation, unfortunately that is exactly what has happened this gen, everything got way more expensive. That sucks, but if we go another 20 years with games costing the same price $70/$80 those prices will be okay in 10-20 years. System price increases are real bad as well these days.
Just to point out how awful his argument is, "If you're going to spend over $200 million to build a game, your margins are super tight, unless you can expect to sell 25 million units. Unless you're Rockstar, [you] should not expect to sell 25 million units.".... yeah except that even at $60 those 25 million sales make $1.5 billion, you'd literally only need to sell 4 million copies to make a few tens of millions in profit, so claiming "unless you can expect to sell 25 million units" is an insanely disingenuous argument.
And the market has gotten way bigger over the past two decades which is what allows games to be profitable despite $100 million or $200 million costs. No game needs to be more than $60, that's a fact. If you don't think you can sell 4 million copies, then simply don't make a hyper-realistic game that costs $200 million. Nintendo manages.
Make a $50 million dollar game (still a huge budget!) and you're making money at a million copies.
These video game prices (on everything) are getting out of control these days. Pure greed. The only companies that need to raise prices are those that don't make successful games, but if you can't make a good profit at $60, you're gonna get even fewer buyers at $70 or $80 so you aren't going to make a profit at those prices either, but you will make the consumer mad and be less likely to buy your games in the future. Game companies have lost their way.
You're ignoring taxes, the retailer/platform cut, and advertising. Many sales also come at lower price points., and there's also the question of profit, because that's what businesses want. You do have a point, but the situation isn't as good as you make it out to be. The truth is somewhere between your version and Layden's, and probably not particularly close to either one's, if I had to make a quick guess.
This guy talks too much; he clearly has a chip on his shoulder.
I mean he's not wrong that it would be preferable over microtransactions, but the main problem is pricing all games practically the same when they are clearly so different in development effort and value.
It's far better now than during the 5th Gen. You could pay £40 for FF7 and £40 for Parappa the Rapper. One game took 40 hour to finish, the other took 40 minutes.
I prefer micro transactions. They are optional in 99% of the cases
