A glance at Steam's top sellers reveals games at all sorts of prices: $60, $40, $30, $15, $4. Game prices are more flexible and fluid than they've ever been, but triple-A games on consoles still mostly aim for the exact same price: $60 for PlayStation 4 / Xbox One, or $70 for the "next-gen" PS5 / Xbox Series X version. For the last year publishers have held back from bringing that $70 price to PC, but it looks like Square Enix is about to break the seal.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake is coming to the Epic Games Store on December 16th, where it's priced at $69.99. Square Enix seems to be plunging boldly ahead with $70 PC games, as it also announced that next year's Forspoken, coming in May, will be the same price.
These aren't the first PC games to ever cost $70, of course, but these are notably just the standard editions of each games, without bundled season passes or soundtracks or cosmetic DLC. This isn't a premium: it's the new normal. Or at least what publishers like Square Enix want to be the new normal.
Square Enix is the first major publisher to push a $70 base price on PC; some recent high profile games like Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty Vanguard have stuck to $60, even though they cost $10 more on the new consoles. It seems like the $60 triple-A game will be around on PC for awhile longer, at least: there are some 2022 games like Tiny Tina's Wonderlands that are already announced at that price, even though they cost more if you buy them on a PS5 or Xbox Series X. But it seems inevitable other publishers will follow Square Enix eventually, even if there's a good argument that big budget games should actually cost less.
$70 feels steep, but the new normal is even worse for most other countries than it is for the US. Square Enix is selling Forspoken for $115.95 in Australia, which is 17.9% pricier based on a currency conversion to the US dollar according to SteamDB. In the UK it's £64.99, or 23.2% pricier. And the European price is just ridiculous: at 79.99€, Forspoken is almost 30% more expensive in Euros than in US dollars. At least we have international Steam sales to lessen the sting.
Final Fantasy 16 isn't on PC yet, but you can get the full Clive experience in FF14 right now by wearing his clothes and riding his dog, via the new crossover event
Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is having server queue issues months before it's even out, as Square Enix's online store crashes under the weight of pre-orders
