Capcom now charging $69.99 for new AAA games

Capcom will officially introduce its first $69.99 game and solidify the new pricing trend for modern games.

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It's official: New AAA games now officially cost $69.99 across the board (well, except for games like Alan Wake II). The new pricing trend was first introduced by Sony, Take-Two Interactive, and Electronic Arts at the early onset of the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X generation, and one by one, major publishers and game-makers started moving towards the upped MSRP--even Nintendo, who charged $69.99 for Tears of the Kingdom.

Japanese publishers like SEGA and Capcom used to be among the last big-name publishers to keep their titles the pre-Gen 9 prices, but even they have increased costs. SEGA is charging $69.99 for the new Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth game, and Capcom, well, they're starting off their next fiscal year with their first $69.99 game.

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Days ago, Capcom announced that Dragon's Dogma II would launch on March 22, 2024 on all platforms. Navigating over to the pre-order pages for the game shows a $69.99 price tag on the PlayStation Store, Xbox, and on Steam, indicating that Capcom should be using this mainline price moving forward.

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This means my earlier predictions were wrong.

Recently, Capcom management told investors that the company aspired to eventually sell 100 million games per year. Capcom is almost halfway there, having shipped over 41 million games in FY 2022.

Since Capcom is so far off the mark, I predicted that the publisher could keep its games at $59.99 in an effort to sell more copies. This, of course, would deliver less revenue per copy sold, but it could improve the odds of hitting 100 million sooner than later.

It turns out that's not the case. Capcom is indeed raising the prices of its games to $69.99 but we should still see the other part of it's game plan stay where it is; Capcom relies heavily on frequent discounts and sales (such as the incredible Black Friday deals that we just saw) in order to move higher volume.