Gamers agree £70 price tags on games make them less likely to try new things

It’s no secret that gaming is an expensive hobby. The price of a brand new game seems to increase with the release of each subsequent console generation.

If you’re looking to dive into Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on 20 October, it’ll set you back a whopping £70 - the new normal for PlayStation 5. In our review, we said, “It’s hard not to come away from my time with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 grinning from ear-to-ear. This is an amazing fantasy come to life and realised like never before. Insomniac Games has crafted yet another heartfelt Spider-Man story bursting with twists, turns, and show-stopping spectacle.” As a sequel, gamers say they feel more confident spending £70 on a familiar franchise. Dropping £70 on a new IP though? Many say they’re far less likely to do so.

Take a look at Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 in action below.

A discussion was started by Reddit user Famaffe who said, “I’ve been thinking about the price hike of new games for the past few days and for me personally, the new $69.99 price tag most certainly makes me less likely to consider buying a game I’m not so sure of. It’s happened with several games that [have] come out, [with] the most recent being MW3. I haven’t played Call of Duty since Black Ops 2 in 2012 so I’m a bit on the fence about jumping back in, but after seeing it has adopted the new standard price my willingness to give it a shot dropped to almost zero.”

Plenty of people agreed. One user replied, “I've become a mostly patient gamer, unless it's something I'm really really excited for. There's just no need to buy a game straight away. Especially these days, when the game will often have issues that will be patched later. If you're willing to wait, you get a better product for a better price. It's tough to argue against that,” while vroomatic added, “Yes. I don’t know how people afford these games at all with the current living cost crisis. I’m fairly well off, but I still have a hard time justifying a purchase of a game with that price tag.”

Many said that they’ve turned to using Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus instead of buying new releases, whilst the vast majority of commenters said they wait for games to go on sale. Let’s just hope we don’t see a further price rise with the next console gen.