Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick said the company had not seen a “pushback” to recent widespread price increases for big-budget games, which now regularly sell for $70.
Many publishers have adopted this $70 price as standard, including Sony, Activision Blizzard, and Gearbox for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Earlier this week, Sega also suggested adopting a similar approach for its future releases and said it was “monitoring market conditions.”
As for those who have already raised prices to that higher point, Zelnick says he hasn’t seen any real resistance from players so far.
Zelnick’s comments come from Take-Two’s latest earnings call (thanks VGC), in which he stated that consumers are now generally curbing overall spending by “going either to the things they really, really care about, the blockbusters, or to value.”
As for Take-Two itself, Zenick seemed confident about its slate, with “a bunch of blockbusters” and a “wonderful catalog.”
The publisher also suggested that Grand Theft Auto 6 could launch as early as next year. In the company’s annual earnings report, which was released earlier this week, Take-Two predicted it would generate a staggering $8 billion in net bookings for its 2025 fiscal year (beginning April 2024) as it launched “several ground-breaking titles’. One of them is definitely GTA6…
Outside of Take-Two, Mortal Kombat 1 was officially revealed yesterday by publisher Warner Bros Games in a rather graphic and juicy sounding trailer. Along with that debut, we’ve also revealed the various platforms NetherRealm’s upcoming fighter will be released on – PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store).
As you can see, there are no plans for a PS4 or Xbox One version of the game – Mortal Kombat 1 is a “next-gen” edition only. Well, except for the Switch, which, despite my much affection, is somewhat relatively dated hardware.
But even though Mortal Kombat 1 will be released on Nintendo’s hybrid console and likely won’t have the same graphical polish as those PS5 or Xbox X/S versions, it will still cost the same as its more powerful counterparts – that’s $69. 99 for the Standard Edition game.
This will be the second game to be released on the Nintendo Switch at this higher price point, the first of which was the recently released Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (although it’s worth noting that in the UK the game retails for £60 ).
Tears of the Kingdom has gained a lot of fans in the week since its release, and I’ve seen no complaints from those across the pond that they have to fork over an extra $10 for the pleasure of returning to Hyrule.
Will this also apply to Mortal Kombat 1? Right now, I’m not sure it will be (although I’m glad to be proven wrong).
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