Increasing prices are continuing to plague the games industry, with software prices (among other things) seeing consistent increases. Nintendo announced that Mario Kart World would launch for the Nintendo Switch 2 at an $80 price, following which Microsoft announced that it, too, would begin pricing its first-party releases at the same price going forward. So does this mean the rest of the industry is going to follow suit?
That much remains to be seen, but as far as the upcoming Borderlands 4 is concerned, developer Gearbox Entertainment’s CEO Randy Pitchford has suggested that an $80 price point for the looter shooter is a possibility.
Speaking at a PAX East panel (via GamesRadar), Pitchford said that he doesn’t know yet what Borderlands 4’s price is going to be, explaining that the decision hasn’t been made yet behind the scenes. That said, he went on to add that with Borderlands 4 having been developed on a budget that was more than twice as high as Borderlands 3’s budget, there’s a chance that the price reflects that.
“I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t know. That is the truth. I’ll hit it straight on,” Pitchford said. “It’s an interesting time. On one level, we’ve got a competitive marketplace where the people that make those choices want to sell as many units as possible and they want to be careful about people that are price-sensitive. There are some folks who don’t want to see prices go up, even the ones deciding what the prices are.
“There’s other folks accepting the reality that game budgets are increasing, and there’s tariffs for the retail packaging. It’s getting gnarly out there, you guys. Borderlands 4 has more than twice the development budget for Borderlands 3. More than twice. So the truth is, I don’t know what the price is going to be.”
Pitchford went on to add that Borderlands 4’s price “might be the new price that Nintendo and Microsoft have led with,” but at the same time, said that there’s also a chance that “it might be that we stay back.” With the game’s pre-orders supposedly not too far away from going live, we will likely know for sure one way or another soon enough.
Borderlands 4 launches on September 12 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
