Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan has defended the company’s decision to increase software prices for first-party PlayStation 5 games of choice.
Launch titles Demon’s Souls and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition (which includes Spider-Man Remastered) both have a suggested retail price of $ 70 / £ 70.
A Sony spokesperson recently indicated that the $ 70 price tag is currently reserved for “larger” first-party PS5 games in a strategy that “reflects the increased development resources needed for these ambitious games.” Family titles like Sackboy: Big Adventure, $ 60.
Asked by The Telegraph whether it considers $ 70 / £ 70 a fair price for a video game, PlayStation president Ryan said: “Yes, yes, I do. If you measure the hours of entertainment that a video game, like Demon’s Souls, provides compared to any other format. From entertainment, I think this is a very direct comparison to painting. “
A recent Bloomberg article alleged that Sony considers the pricing of PS5 games to be over $ 70, a report which Ryan described as “categorically wrong.”
He also declined to confirm whether future games from top PlayStation studios like Naughty Dog would charge a price of $ 70 / £ 70. “I don’t foresee anything that may or may not happen in the future,” said Ryan.
Other publishers have also decided to increase software prices for some of their next-generation games, including Take-Two with NBA 2K21 and Activision with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
Competitor platform Microsoft has chosen to play its cards close to its box when it comes to pricing next-generation software, with Tim Stewart, Chief Financial Officer of Xbox, recently saying that it will announce pricing for first-party Xbox Series X / S software “at the right time.”
In the same Telegraph interview, Ryan predicted that PS5 owners wouldn’t have to wait for the end of the console’s life cycle for some generation-specific games.
“I think our studios on the PS4 generation have performed amazingly,” he said. “But it appears little acknowledged that all the great generation defining games we have deployed on PS4 came in the second half of the cycle – and that won’t be the case this time.”
Ryan also declined to comment on whether God of War Ragnorak will be released for PS4 as well as PS5 next year and claimed that the company has not received any comments indicating consumers are concerned about the amount of storage space the PS5 provides.
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