All that talk of currency conversion, rising development costs and other economic type phrases are all just smoke and mirrors suggests analyst Michael Pachter.
The price increase is purely ”a business decision” to see if consumers will put up with paying more, and if so then more are likely to follow. Activision ”knows it has a ‘hot’ game”.
”The price increase is a business decision,” Pachter told Eurogamer. ”Activision knows it has a ‘hot’ game, knows that the market will pay an additional 10 per cent, and has decided to increase price accordingly.”
”My guess is that this is a one-time test for Activision, and that they will re-think the strategy after seeing if it angers consumers,” he offered. ”If there is no consumer backlash, I think we may see higher pricing on other games, regardless of the GBP/USD translation rate.”
”The repercussions could be significant and lasting. If Activision is successful, we may see increases for other ‘hot’ games in the future. We see tiered pricing to the downside for more casual games, so why not tiered pricing to the upside for hot games?”
”This is the year that Activision raises prices selectively for several games,” notes Pachter, ”and the US increases don’t have anything to do with foreign currency translation.”
A test huh? Well, sadly, this is one we gamers are likely to fail unless Infinity Ward somehow managed to balls-up Modern Warfare 2 - which we hope hasn’t happened.
