As large parts of the games industry looks to normalize $80 as the entry price for gaming, EA says it’s not planning to join in yet. EA CEO Andrew Wilson spoke on an earnings call to say the company is not intending to start charging eighty bucks “at this stage.”
It had been widely suspected that the game would be $80, given the wider industry trend, and not least when the game is rumored to have had a budget of $400 million. However, speaking during a Q1 earnings call (as reported by IGN), CEO Andrew Wilson responded to an investor question saying, “We’re not looking to make any changes on pricing at this stage.”
Explaining that the company already uses “a fairly broad pricing scheme across our various products,” Wilson said—clearly thinking about how this would be reported later—“We’ll continue to look at opportunities to deliver great value to our players through various pricing schemes over the course of time,” then added, “but no dramatic changes planned yet.”
The bump up to $80 has proven a controversial one for the games industry. Microsoft led the way back in May, announcing that its first-party games would now cost an extra 10 dollars, before performing a reverse-ferret over the price of The Outer Worlds 2 last week, and simultaneously announcing this holiday’s Black Ops 7 would be $70 too. Nintendo just dove straight in, even testing the waters at $90. Others made extremely tone-deaf comments about how people could just cough up the extra cost if they were a “real fan,” before being shamed into shutting up.
It’s tempting to assume that EA was hoping to be able to ask $80 for Battlefield 6 until discovering that—surprise!—Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was going to be $70 after all. Given the two games are likely to be launching reasonably close together, and will be frantically competing for the same audience, it’d be madness to deliberately out-price the rival. However, Wilson said on the call that $80 prices hadn’t been factored into any of EA’s projected earnings through March 2026. Now, that could be because the company wanted to low-ball and report unexpected profits, or it could always have been planning to release BF6 at the previous upper price.
Of course, when pre-orders are announced there will inevitably be ways to spend vastly more than $70 on Battlefield 6, with ludicrous bundles offering imaginary doodads and different dress-up options for your soldiers for possibly hundreds of dollars. Seventy will get you the very basic version of the game, without a season pass, DLC, etc, and it’ll make sure to let you know what a pedestrian person you are as you choose it. Fortunately, there’s the far smarter option of never pre-ordering anything, because it’s a scam.
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