A year ago, it seemed like a given that we would soon be paying $80 for our games — and this was even before Nintendo had announced that it would break the price barrier and sell Mario Kart World at that price. There was growing pressure and worry in the game industry over inflation and the rapidly rising cost of game development versus stagnant growth in the market and pricing that had been locked for years. Blockbuster game development was starting to look unsustainable. The shift felt inevitable.
But it hasn’t really come to pass. While the industry holds its breath waiting for whatever Rockstar Games prices Grand Theft Auto 6 at, everyone else has backed down, including Microsoft, which announced and then scrapped a plan to move to $80 pricing. Players seemed too price-sensitive, and publishers blinked.
This year, a radically different narrative is emerging. Publishers may soon be looking at how to make games cheaper, not more expensive.
The game that has thrust this question to the front of everyone’s minds is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Sandfall Interactive’s breakout role-playing game. Clair Obscur’s success is conspicuous; it has sold very well (if not outstandingly so), swept every Game of the Year award going, even secured its development team a French knighthood. It’s a large-scale, graphically rich adventure. And it costs $50.
According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Clair Obscur was on everyone’s lips at the DICE industry conference in Las Vegas in February, a convention that’s particularly popular with video game executives. People wanted to know how Sandfall had made its game for so little money ($10 million, reportedly) and what other lessons they could learn from its success. Schreier posited one obvious lesson: make games cheaper (or make cheaper games, which isn’t quite the same thing).
