Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford has once again commented on the price of Borderlands 4, saying the game would be “worth it” even if 2K Games opted to charge as much as five times more than the actual price of $70.
Pitchford previously stirred things up by saying “real fans” would find a way to come up with the money to buy the game if 2K opted to charge more than the current going-rate for AAA games. He addressed this later, saying he did not intend to “trigger” people.
Speaking to IGN at Gamescom, Pitchford revisited that discussion, starting off by saying he’s a person who enjoys conversing with fans online. While his comments about Borderlands 4’s price certainly caused a stir in online communities, he said he believes online chatter doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
“Let’s be honest–the sum of all social media talk, and the sum of every article written about that–doesn’t matter. Literally, it doesn’t,” he said. “At the end of the day, as all of us do, when we approach entertainment, we think about what it is that we want and what it is they are asking of us. If we want something, and it feels like a fair price or whatever the barrier is, then we explore it and we engage in it. And if it doesn’t feel fair, we step away.”
Pitchford said Gearbox, along with 2K and owner Take-Two, set out to choose prices that feel like a fair exchange to the consumer. A person who buys Borderlands 4 for $70 should feel like they ended up getting the “better end of the deal,” Pitchford said, adding that he believes Gearbox has “always lived up to that.”
For Borderlands 4, Pitchford said Gearbox is delivering something with “amazing value,” adding that the price point discussion online is going to blow over and that “it’s going to be fine.”
“The price isn’t up to me anyway,” he said, alluding to how 2K Games and Take-Two make pricing decisions. “I was just engaging in a conversation that was happening on the internet. For any given product, the [online] conversation doesn’t matter.”
Pitchford went on to say that he is “thrilled” by the decision to price Borderlands 4 at $70 for the standard edition. He said he understands there is currently a cost-of-living crisis and some people might not have as much money to spend on entertainment, but he believes Borderlands 4 overdelivers on value relative to the cost. To make his point, Pitchford said 2K could have charged much more and it still would have represented good value.
“I want everybody to play it. I want as many people as possible to play it. There might be a little bit of friction there for some people as prices go up, but I also know that from a value perspective, they probably could have charged five times as much and it would have felt worth it,” he said. “And some people might have been willing to pay that. I don’t know if I would have. I want it to be as cheap as possible.”
While Borderlands 4’s standard edition is $70, Gearbox is selling multiple other higher-priced versions of the game. There is a $100 Deluxe edition, a $130 Super Deluxe edition, and a $150 Collector’s edition for Borderlands 4. These versions come with a variety of digital extras.
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden argues that companies are able to keep a new AAA game’s standard edition price at $70 in part because of all the other ways a product can “nickel and dime” players with DLC, microtransactions, battle passes, and season passes. Layden said the kind of digital content included with more expensive premium editions of games come at nearly a “zero” cost to the company, while players get perceived value.
To date, just one major company has charged $80 for a new game this generation, and that was Nintendo with the Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World. Nintendo defended the price point, saying the kart racing game is worth it given what it offers. The game sold more than 5.6 million units in the first month, though the game is included with a $500 Switch 2 bundle.
Borderlands 4 launches on September 12 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with a Switch 2 edition coming in October.
