Gamers unanimously back Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 devs comments about game prices

Gamers on social media have unanimously backed comments made by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developers about the price of its game and the state of pricing within the gaming industry.

Pricing is one of the hottest topic in video games right now - Nintendo took the plunge and was the first to confirm it would be raising the prices of its top tier games to $80 with Mario Kart World.

This seems to have set a bit of a precedent as Microsoft confirmed some of its own first-party games will rise to $80 in the holiday season. The company also recently announced the prices of Xbox Series X/S consoles and associated hardware were rising, with Series S consoles going up by $80 and Series X consoles a whopping $100.

Sony said during its most recent earnings call it was considering raising the prices of PS5 consoles and games too.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, developed by Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive, launched at $50 and is currently the highest rated game of the year on MetaCritic. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, two developers revealed why the game was priced at this point and hope players will support AA games at this cost going forward.

Matthew Handrahan, portfolio director at Kepler, said: "I think as that AAA price goes up, I think it creates more of an opportunity to be launching games - more sensibly scoped games - pricing them at that $40-50 range. I don't think anyone that played Expedition 33 would think they didn't get their money's worth out of that."

Francois Meurisse, Sandfall's chief operating officer and producer, added: "When we announced the pricing at $50 we did actually have a little of a backlash online. In the end we stuck with the price, we doubled down on it, we provided some context about the fact that it wasn't a AAA.

"In the end, it was a win-win situation because it was a way to attract more players towards the game, to have good player satisfaction about their buying and it could actually end up doing more sales. So maybe players' perception can change a bit about that kind of price."

This was reposted on Reddit and the post has 31k upvotes at the time of writing, with gamers seemingly unanimous in their support of AA games being priced at that point.

The post also referenced publishers hoping GTA 6 will cost $100 for gamers - GTA 6 releasing at this price has previously been rumoured but is unconfirmed. Previous reports from analysts have claimed publishers hope this will happen so they can charge a similar price for their own games.

Commenting on the Reddit post, Rosstin316 said: "In my book Expedition 33 is officially the 'what the f*** is your excuse' for the rest of the entire industry. A game like this for $50 feels like a straight up miracle."

gogul1980 said: "GTA 6 isn't going to charge me anymore than I want to pay. Happy to play the waiting game."

ClovieKay said: "What's actually going to happen is GTA 6 will come out at $100 and people will buy it because it's GTA 6, then other companies will raid their games to $100 but no-one will buy them at that price and they will be forced to go down or go on sale. GTA will have the only pass. Other games will not."

Dundore77 said: "People will buy good games. For every one Expedition 33 we will get 20 half a***d AA games that are nothing but worse version of games already out just like we did back during the PS2 / Xbox and Xbox 360 / PS3 years."

Embarrassed-Lab-8095 said: "All I care about is the quality of the game."

Elsewhere from indy100, Ubisoft's latest Splinter Cell tease has splits fans and Star Wars Battlefront 3 hopefuls are admitting defeat.

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