Capcom has outlined its “basic strategy” for pricing new games, which includes slashing the price tag down to $10 or $5 after five years or so.
The Resident Evil and Monster Hunter Wilds publisher said as much during its fiscal year financial results Q&A. Capcom supposedly looks to “maximize the unit sales volume and profit” for newly released games over a five-year period. “While only an outline, our basic strategy for pricing titles begins at launch when games are sold for about $60; over time, we gradually reduce the price according to market value.”
The publisher explains that “after about five years,” it will “typically” reduce the cost of a game to $10 and then $5. Capcom says it gave lizard-pant-making sim Monster Hunter World a price reduction last year and offered the game for $9.99. Alongside the announcement of Monster Hunter Wilds, the price reduction led to “significantly increased” sales for the mammoth game, which recently moved past 25 million units sold.
Looking at Capcom’s Steam listings reveals a slightly different picture, though. Resident Evil 7 and Dead Rising 4, both seven-year-old games, aren’t normally priced at $10 or $5. Both are regularly on sale, however, and you can grab both for the price of a cup of (expensive) coffee right now, so Capcom might have been referring to discounts rather than permanent price reductions. Either way, the message is the same: wait long enough and you can get your $70/$60 games for cheap. There’s more than enough to play in the meantime.
See what else is on the horizon with our new games of 2024 guide.