Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto got surprisingly frank about video game prices.
Tsujimoto knows that many gamers won’t like what he has to say, but he lays it all out: video game prices need to be higher.
In an interview with Nikkei, translated by Tech4Gamers, Tsujimoto had this to say:
“Game prices are too low. Development costs are about 100 times higher than during the Famicom era, but software prices have not gone up that much.”
Of course, Tsujimoto is hardly the first person to bring up this discourse. Ever since the industry decided to raise their own prices for specific games to $ 70, gamers have been in an uproar. But it has to be said that for all that noise, these $ 70 games continue to sell well.
This isn’t a new conversation at all, but Tsujimoto had some interesting things to add to this. He also says that the wages of video game developers also need to go up. These are all tied up to the fact that making video games is much harder than it used to be.
As Tsujimoto pointed out, there has been growing discussion for some time now that game company wages need to be fair, and the developers themselves need to get better treatment, in particular from bigger employers.
Certainly everyone will immediately think of Hideo Kojima and the shabby treatment he received at the hands of Konami, even as he was a member of their board of directors at the time. But we should remember that Konami did the same to many famous developers in the company, such as Koji Igarashi.
Even more than that, less famous and acclaimed developers, from all companies, not just Konami or Capcom, deserve better treatment and wages. And so, Tsujimoto argues that these are good reasons to raise prices of video games.
Tsujimoto walks his talk. Last year, Capcom announced that they would be raising salaries for their employees by 30 %. The company also established a new Chief Human Resources Officer, and a new bonus pay structure in the company.
Capcom has recently seen huge success in their slate of Resident Evil video game remakes. One can’t just argue in bad faith, that Tsujimoto is making such statements because his company is not making money. This would be a blatant lie.
If anything, Tsujimoto saw his company’s recent success as an opportunity to broach this difficult topic. If you enjoyed Capcom’s recent Resident Evil remakes series, or other games made by the studio, you should want to pay the employees more. And gamers can have a direct hand in doing that, by paying more for their games.
