Sega Looks Set To Raise Its Game Prices Up To $70

It’s going to become the standard I’m telling you. More and more devs are pushing for it, it’s inevitable.

Does anyone actually pay these prices aside from digital only? I rarely pay full retail for boxed games even on release day.

In any case, there's absolutely no way I'm paying $70 to own the Sonic games for the 8th time.

"In the global marketplace, AAA game titles for console have been sold at $59.99 for many years, but titles sold at $69.99 have appeared in the last year...”

Luckily, Sega has never produced any AAA titles and probably never will. You guys have nothing to worry about. 😉

games CAN be worth $70. $60 wasnt a standard that was gonna last forever when game systems just get more and more powerful, but thats a price point i have a lot less trust in with sonic

@prismt companies are here to make money, not help gamers. And they'd be excused for assuming that recessions already have an age-old answer called "sales". Especially Sega whose discounts, like most third parties, tend to cut notably deeper than Nintendo's. Maybe they want to price the games at $70 so they can possibly get some $2-5 per copy more from what they see people commonly buying the stuff at.😏

Can't think of any of their console games that I'd pay £50 for, let alone £70. Due to the realities of gaming on a budget, unless it's something like Tears of the Kingdom or a multiplayer title I'm into (I'll be getting Street Fighter 6 shortly after launch) I usually wait for a discount for most games. Usually happens within 12 months, and frankly I haven't got the time to play everything I want to play at launch anyway.

Sony got away with it and Call of Duty also got away with it. It was a matter of time unfortunatelly.
Fun fact, the increase from 50 to 60 dollars was done in a very similar way.

Shooting themselves in the red sneakers - I suspect Dr Robotnik is behind this.

With the stats Sony sent out, they aren't selling as many games but making more money.

It's pushing more people to wait for a discount than purchase day one.

Looking at pre oders for all consoles here everything once converted is at least 65 dollars to 90 dollars here and has been for some time now
.

I have yet to pay $60 for a game, so $70 will never happen.

What's even better is how companies have profited from a number of subtractions, first by moving to digital, where nothing physical is made, and then by cutting back on what is in physical releases, such as the removal of manuals, all the while keeping the price the same.

God luck with that SEGA

@Pigeon well, its a tough situation. companies need to make cash but overall there is less cash to go around and people are poorer and more careful with their spendings. but for sure lol, SEGA are not making the best games in the world, but they still have enough of a fanboy sonic base to risk the increase.

if only they were good

Given that I rarely buy games on day one anymore this doesn't really affect me. Games get released buggy more often than not so I'd rather wait awhile and pay less for a better version of the game.

I used to love Sega. I really did.
Post Dreamcast, though, the hits petered out, and right now I honestly can't think of a single AAA title of theirs that I'd happily pay that much for.

Bring back the deluge of Dreamcast era games, and I'll dive right in, but modern Sega...?

Sega are out of their minds none of their games are worth $70 not Sonic or even Persona

Good luck to them, I don't think I've bought a new Sonic game in particular for more than £20 since Adventure DX. I just can't see Sega ever succeeding at selling their games at $70. I just don't see them ever convincing many people they're worth that much.

Maybe with the exception Atlus with Persona since at least they've got a dedicated audience and always deliver, they're the most likely to get away with Persona 6 at $70. Given a lot of people bought both Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal.

Taking inflation into account, games in late 80s and early 80s were equivalent of £80 in today's prices. They had smaller development teams and less to worth with.

Taking that into account, games are still cheaper than they were 30 years ago. But they need to release unbroken games. Still shoddy they charge so much for an unfinished game.

@Dr_Lugae Persona will not sell millions at $70 P5 only sold well because of all the discounts

Shouldn't they raise the quality first?

There have been a very small selection of games that I'd have paid that price for but none have come from Sega.

It'd have to be Elden Ring or Tears of the Kingdom level for me to even consider it.

SEGA is still like being edgy and controversial.

Sorry, I am one of the most positive people on this site, who even enjoys games others don't like. Even I hate this idea and trend of making games $70. I really do not want to pay $70 for any game.

If this happens, looks like I'm waiting for sales before buying a Sonic game. At least Sega puts their games on sale on a regular basis, so there is that.

@JohnnyC why is TOTK the one exception but everything else isn't? Sounds like Nintendo bias

Yes but in reference to Sega and a number of others the quality needs to be there. I'm not paying 70 for half baked releases with performance issues.

There are enough good releases in the past 12 months or so like TOTK, Final Fantasy Crisis Core, Nier Automata port l, XC3, GOW, Ratchet and Clank, Elden Ring, Metroid Remaster etc to put to shame the likes of Sonic, Jedi Survivor and Obviously FIFA on Switch etc.

I don't mind $70 AAA games (the industry standard has been at $60 since 2007) but I do like that budget games are being sold for lower prices, usually $30-50. With the increase, this pushes the budget game price up too, now at $40-60. It's not something that's talked about much, but I'm definitely not paying full price for these experiences. No way is any Sonic game a AAA full price experience, especially since they drop to half price just months after initial release. Sega has hardly had any massive hits, I seriously doubt the quality of their games to qualify for the industry standard upper price either.

I don’t see a big deal but that’s because I wait for things to go on sale. I’ve got such a big backlog that it won’t kill me to wait a while.

Oh so the quality WILL follow ?

I barely buy Sega games for 60, let alone 70. I think the only games from them I bought full price was the Bayonetta games. And then probably only 3. And that's not even really much of a Sega franchise anymore I think?

In any case. I rarely ever did their games worth full price, personally. Their games just tend to feel awkward, control wise, and they don't really click with me.

I'll probably continue to wait for sales on their games if I really want them, but I'm not in a rush to get their games.

@ActionPanther I buy digital only and never ever pay these prices as well

@nhSnork this

I wouldn't pay $30 for most of the stuff coming from Sega nowadays, but that's just me. Inflation is a thing. Everything else in the world has gone up a lot for a long time since the last time AAA games went up in price, so it only makes sense.

Better up the quality then

Zelda was 70€ in 2017… and I agree with the value of that game.. the next title which equal development and content being 70€ again now is nothing shocking

The games Nintendo released after Zelda BOTW were still priced at 50€, and they also match value. SEGA needs to release better games if they charge 70

Sega looks set to remain in the 6 month bargain bin.

Not surprised by this at all.

Well most games are overpriced if you think about it. Only a couple might be worth the 70 price tag, though that also depends on the person buying the game. I mean, does anyone really think the latest Kirby game is worth 55€?

Very few games are going to get away with charging £60 plus, and there’s very few games Sega make that I would consider justifying that cost (Persona 6 is really the only I can imagine being “worth” that).

@Exerion76 my thoughts exactly, games are cheaper than they used to be.

$70 is going to be the standard across the industry in a couple years, so this isn't surprising. Sega publishes a lot of popular titles, so they will likely not see much of a sales dip from a price increase. The quality of Sonic games is all over the place, but it's got a strong following. Yakuza is highly regarded, as is Persona and other SMT and Atlus titles. Total War continues to be a very popular PC franchise. They have plenty of other titles they could bring back and would likely sell fine at $70, such as Valkyria Chronicles, Phantasy Star, and Shining games.

It's just going to take much longer to play these titles, they are just giving people more reason to invest in game pass or plus extra to kill time till these prices are reasonable, backlogs help with the wait anyways

Won't be long before $70 is base standard for the regular edition of games across the board. As soon as one company gets away with it, others follow suit.

Nintendo can at least justify a massive game like Zelda but Sega has never done anything on that scale

The only game with Sega on the title worth $70 published wasn't made by Sega - but Platinum. Bayonetta.

You guys begged for this though. And here it is. Enjoy.

Here is my extremely controversial opinion that will undoubtedly get me flamed by the comment section (please be nice...); I don't mind paying £60/$70 for a game if the scale and quality justify the inflated price. I'm playing TOTK right now and the sheer level of technical polish and unbelivable scale more than makes up for the fact that it's £10 more than the average Switch game.

That being said, I don't like the idea of said inflated price tag becoming the industry standard and even though I'm much more positive about Sega/Sonic games than most people on this site, I can't think of any of their games (apart from debatedly Yakuza) that warrant such a steep price tag. They need to be careful with how they approach this statement since I imagine they don't want to lose any more good faith with their fans.

The "Atlus Tax" has returned, folks.

I wouldn't bother with Sonic, Yakuza, or Monkey Ball when they're on sale now; what makes Sega think they can trot out the same tired, middling-quality franchises while ignoring the vast majority of their enormous catalog of IPs for the past 2 to 3 decades and actually expect people to pay more? I would consider $70 for a new Skies of Arcadia or proper, SRPG Shining Force to help support franchises I care about seeing again, but Sega's done very little on consoles outside of the mainstream Valkyria Chronicles games in the past 20 years that reflects the quality they were once renowned for where I'm personally concerned, let alone anything that justifies talking about a price hike.

I hardly ever buy new games now because of the price increased and I'm more than happy with what games I get on PS+ extra and Gamepass.
My only wish was that Nintendo also did a decent subscription service so I could get more use out of my Switch.

Can't remember the last time I paid full price for a game let alone a Sega one.

I'll gladly pay $70 for a Sonic game once they start doing proper Latin American localizations of his games. I'm starting to get a little tired of them just copy-pasting the Spanish version.
It's the same problem I have with Pokémon since Nintendo started to release the games in Spanish in Latin America.

I don’t see myself paying $70 for a game. Even with Zelda, I got a $10 coupon through Amazon. It will have to be something I really love, wait for a sale or some other discount….

Persona and Bayonetta are the only games I'd consider at full price from Sega now (by way of Atlus and Platinum)

Sonic games since forces ive learned to just wait for a sale in 3 to 4 weeks time, Yakusa and monkey ball etc gamepass/plus or a maybe particular big sale.

Nothing much else really from Sega interests me anymore

SEGA develops nothing that is worth $60, let alone $70. They exist largely off the backs of the better developers they have bought over the years, like Atlus and Creative Assembly.

So you're going to make game content worth an extra $10, right, Sega?

LOL... bye (again) Sega!!!

Let’s be real people will drop $70 for Persona 6.

Oh come on just because Nintendo set TOTK at 70 dollars doesn’t mean that other people have to do it!

I really don't understand all the hemming and hawing about this. Games have been sold at $60 for almost thirty years now - I remember picking up Mario Tennis for the 64 at that price point back in the '90s. $70 today is still cheaper, when factoring in inflation, are still cheaper than what they were sold for in the '80s and '90s.

Honestly sounds like entitlement from a lot of you.

Stop buying games at $70 or greater. No game is worth that much to me. Specially in digital format. You guys are feeding the new trend and you'll be the ones to blame when it does become the norm. I prefer $50 and under. I usually pay $20 to $30 and anything more than that, I really have to think if it is worth it or not.

Personally I can’t think of a sega/atlus game that is worth 70 bucks (or day 1) and I love the like a dragon/yakuza series.

Is sonic worth the price increase? Certainly not the new open world game. If they start charging more for smaller games like Streets of Rage and 2D sonic we got problems. Also, I will give credit to them for bringing Bayonetta into the world.

Obviously, we don't like paying more, but with that said, I get it. Inflation has made everything MUCH more expensive in this world, including the cost of running a business. Costs were already through the roof. It only makes sense for companies to do this. Factor in Zelda setting record sales in the first 3 days even with the price hike, and this is expected.

Then again, Sonic ain't Zelda...so yeah.

@teamdave2002 Do you mean Mario's Tennis for Virtual Boy, because Mario Tennis for the N64 came out in 2001? Either way, your point still stands, and I agree with you that prices have been this way for decades.

With their track record,they should be lowered,not raised

@TenEighty My sentiments exactly. I prefer to pay $50 and under. It’s a case by case basis

Look, I love sonic frontiers, but come on sega, you don’t even let your teams finish the games anyway, and you still want to raise the price, why spend that much on a non polished rushed sonic game, when I can play the fully polished fully finished zelda botw for the same price, I’m sorry sega but if I’m even going to consider, you need to up your games for that much, and you would probably sell me classic sonic again in some other way for a higher price.

Eh, there are plenty of ways to not spend full retail on video games out there now for to impact me too much. If you want to save money on games, stop pre-ordering and wait. Shop around a little bit. See if a deal pops up.

I fully expected to use game vouchers on Tears of the Kingdom to save $20 on it and $10 on another game, and then I ended up finding a way to grab it the day it came out physically for $17.93 USD.

$70 could be fair if game developers eased up on the DLC. And also designed games better I despise Day 1 patches from games.

@KBuckley27 I said games like TOTK, and gave a non-Nintendo example in the same sentence. But yes, shockingly for a visitor to this site I happen to enjoy a lot of Nintendo games.

Imagine a world where SEGA makes games that are worth $70!

Maybe we should take this as a positive? They're going to make great games again...!

Sega aren’t Nintendo. Nothing they put out justifies the price.

I bought Sonic Frontiers for $30 a few months after release. With companies like Sega and Ubisoft, we have nothing to worry about. We're not paying full price on release day anyway.

@Captain-N @Captain-N my apologies I’m in my mid 40s and sometimes forget things. I do remember getting Mario 64 when it came out, but upon looking it up it was August of 2000.

the last expensive game I bought was monkey ball mania almost 2 yrs ago and I believe that was only $50. Ive been playing retro games now more than ever and this isnt helping.

Fair enough, even though sega dont have many games I'd pay 60 bucks for, let alone 70.
Last game I bought (and it was on special) was sonic frontiers.
Was ok, played it once and done

The only Sega titles I would even consider purchasing at $70 would be from the Yakuza series.

@Exerion76 I don't know why it seems that whenever these price change articles come up people never seem to realise that prices haven't changed on par with inflation (as you pointed out). I used to save all my money up to buy NES and SNES games at $50 - $60 dollars. These days the idea of "disposable income" has expanded so broadly that a lot of people in the West think nothing of dropping $70 on a single meal for two people (let alone however many hundreds on a new console that may or may not come with controllers).

Nice. I'll still wait to buy almost every game they make for 20 or less.

If they don’t give us a way to play with Sonic Adventure’s Chao Garden in the Nintendo Switch with connectable VMU and/or Tomogatchi devices; as the Game intended; then $70 is a joke. They better fix their “remastered” broken lighting effects, Restore the animations of Big’s house, and deflate the over-roundness given to Knuckle’s newer sprites.

I’m still waiting for Sakura Wars to be ported to the Nintendo Switch; what other game do they have to port that they can justify them having $70 set to buy their game on the Nintendo Switch.

I will NEVER pay $70 for any game…..no matter the company…..SEGA, Nintendo…..NEVER.

@KBuckley27 I think it’s a reflection of costs as much as anything; honestly, Americans have had a good deal for years. There’s been no price increase in the U.K., yet the new US price point puts it at the same bracket on the exchange rate.

Can't wait to buy their $70 shovelware.

You want people to just wait for a sale for every new release? This is how it happens.

I like Sega and all, but the average game from them is not worth $70. Hell, most of them are barely worth $60 lol

@teamdave2002 It's cool. Your point is still valid. I was just confused which MT you were referring to. Thanks for the reply.

I don't think I will ever buy a $90 retail CAD video game ever in my life.

they're gonna have to jam a LOT of genesis games in there!

"In the global marketplace, AAA game titles for console have been sold at $59.99 for many years, but titles sold at $69.99 have appeared in the last year. We would like to review the prices of titles that we believe are commensurate with price increases, while also keeping an eye on market conditions."

Business lingo for "We want more money so we are raising price because everyone else is doing it."

Couldn't even give a good reason to justify such raise...just because another company did it is not a good reason. While it is important to evaluate the competition but sometimes what others do will not work for another. I really doubt people are going to buy a $69.99 Sonic game especially considering SEGA's spotty track record. Sure things are looking up now for SEGA and their mascot, but it is still not enough to convince consumers to commit to a higher priced product. Most people will probably wait for a sale or price cut.