Ubisoft is one of the largest game developers in the world. The French publisher has several triple AAA titles in its library. Big franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Rainbow Six, The Division, and Far Cry are some of the AAA titles that Ubisoft has published in the last few years. Now, it looks like the next big Ubisoft AAA games will come with a $70 price tag. In an interview with Axios, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said that “some of the games will come at the same price as the competition. The big AAA games will come at $70.” Based on the recent Ubisoft Forward, Skull and Bones will be the first Ubisoft AAA title sold for $70. The new Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which is a shorter game at around 15-20 hours of gameplay, will be priced lower at $50.
Explaining the Ubisoft price increase
Ubisoft has previously placed a $60 price cap on its AAA titles for a standard edition game and has resisted increasing its prices for some years. However, the company had previously made it clear that it was open to increasing prices in the future. Take-Two was the first to increase the price of its big AAA title with NBA 2K21 in 2020. It was followed by Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War which increased its prices only for newer generation consoles. At that time, Activision CEO Strauss Zelnick tempered expectations of a price increase by saying that it is on a “title-by-title basis.” EA also adopted the price increase in 2020 with both FIFA 2021 and Madden 2021 going for $70 on newer generation consoles, similar to Activision. Sony Interactive defended the price increase for the remake of Demon’s Souls with CEO Jim Ryan saying that players got far more hours out of AAA games than any other forms of media. Mind you, the increase is not exclusive to new generation consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox Series S/X. Square Enix notably increased the price of the Final Fantasy VII Remake for PC to $70. Not all gaming executives agree on the price increase. Microsoft Gaming boss, Phil Spencer, stated that the company did not have plans to increase prices for AAA titles. He cited that the cost of newer consoles is already very steep and a slight increase might alienate casual gamers. It is worth noting that Microsoft has not had a first-party AAA release since the Xbox Series X/S came out.
