Calling the attention of fans of PlayStation games on Steam! You better save more money to purchase such moving forward. Well, at least if you are in Canada, Chile, Argentina, China, Columbia, South Korea, and Japan. Sony Interactive Entertainment gives its Steam game prices a boost, making its trademark games on the platform even more expensive. Note that the price increases only apply to the countries mentioned above.
Significant Increases in Steam Game Prices Across the Board
Interestingly, Sony chose to increase their game’s prices on Steam relative to the country and the title in question. For instance, the price tag of PlayStation’s premier franchises more than doubled in Argentina this past week. God of War prices are now at $40 USD (8,499 Argentinian pesos) from around $20 USD (4,199 Argentinian Pesos) on Steam in the country.
The same applied to Spider-Man Remastered. Meanwhile, prices for Returnal and Sackboy: A Big Adventure climbed by 67%. Undoubtedly, Argentina got the short stick of these price hikes.
Even Sony’s home country of Japan wasn’t exempted from the price increases. Looking at the PlayStation games on Steam, you’d see that most of them got about 29% to 32% price increases. While not as drastic as what Argentina got, believe us, that is still a significant jump.
Canadian PlayStation fans on Steam are perhaps the luckiest. Of course, apart from those that weren’t affected at all (lucky Americans). In Canada, the price of the games mentioned above only got a $10 addition. This represents about a 14% to 17% increase relative to the games’ original starting price on the platform.
Steam Games are Becoming More and More Expensive
Ever since the jump to the next generation of consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series X/S), exclusive games and even third-party games have become more costly than ever. Back in the heyday of the PS4 and Xbox One, first-party exclusives had a price tag of $60. Nowadays, they are $10 higher—making the standard prices for such $70.Â
Indeed, gaming is an expensive hobby. Thankfully, subscription benefits and giveaways have also become more appealing and frequent. Some gamers purposefully avoid buying full-priced games and just wait for them to go on discount or even for free on their subscriptions. While doing so may prevent them from enjoying newer titles right off the bat, at least they’d be saving a lot of money.
Now with previous console exclusives jumping to PC as well, it honestly only makes sense to see price hikes in it as well. Like it or not, games will perhaps be more expensive moving forward. After all, the cost of making games isn’t getting any cheaper as well. Add to that the fact that they are also becoming more and more realistic, demanding more powerful technologies and hardware.
PlayStation has previously stated that it wants to take at least half of its releases to PC and even mobile within the next 2 years. With that in mind, is this PlayStation Steam game prices increase just the start of something even bigger? Or maybe it’s just Sony’s way of evening out the market? Only time can tell.
