The September 4th 2020 release date for 2K Sports' latest entry in its basketball series. The base price is noticeably higher, showing a $10 increase, raising its cost to a retail $69.99 (US) on the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5. This indicates the first price hike for a video game since 2005 after the launch of the Xbox 360. This topic was recently discussed on the Monday June 30th episode of the Game Fix Show podcast when the discussion arose regarding the length of video games comparative to their prices.

"I paid $60", host Spano says, "I expect to get 60 dollars worth. I paid 60 dollars for some games, and it took me eight hours to get through it."

"...It's true that the prices haven't really changed much", Verlane adds, "but the power going into them has."

With next gen hardware yet to drop any details regarding the prices, players have speculated for years that a price hike was inevitable, if not all but requested. Given some of the feedback with DLC, fans figured an increase in prices would place an incentive on including more in-game content as opposed to after market add-ons.

It will be determined if this is indeed the direction the the standard retail price of video games will go once pre-orders for future releases become available. How do you feel about paying slightly more for next gen software? Is the increased prices outrageous, or a long time coming to match the production costs?