Hollow Knight: Silksong proves why all video games should be cheaper – Reader’s Feature

Hollow Knight: Silksong – an impulse purchase (Team Cherry)

The low price and high sales of Silksong has convinced one reader that publishers would make much more money if they lowered the cost of triple-A games.

With all the hype around Hollow Knight: Silksong I decided to buy it, even though I didn’t think I’d like it. I’m indifferent to Metroidvanias and dislike Soulsborne games because they’re too hard. If Silksong had been a normal priced game, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Even if it was one of the more expensive indie games you get now I wouldn’t have bought it, but it wasn’t, so I did.

On PlayStation 5, Silksong is only £16. According to most accounts it takes at least 30 hours for most people to beat it. That works out as exactly 50p an hour. I’m not sure I can think of any other form of entertainment, including eating and drinking, that is anywhere near that cheap. And that’s without even trying to adjust for the quality of the entertainment.

At the moment, the most expensive triple-A games are £70 but there’s talk of them going up to £80 and maybe even £100 for GTA 6. I’m sure plenty of people will be willing to pay that… for GTA, but not for anything else. The more prices go up the less anyone is willing to take a chance on anything unusual, but Silksong shows there is another way.

There’s some pretty simple logic that the cheaper something is the more people will buy it. So while, say, 1 million people might buy a mid-level game for £60 it’s more likely that 2 million or more will buy it if it’s £30.

That seems to be fairly obvious to me, although it’s got to be balanced out by how much the thing costs to create. So if you’re only making a small profit at the cheaper price, you might need to go with the higher one to make any real money. It’s also potentially less of a risk to make it more expensive if you think you’ve got a built-in audience that will definitely pay that.

Video games are a bit different to other thing, in that while they have high development costs they don’t cost anything to produce. Even the price of manufacturing a disc and a box is virtually nothing, and most people buy digitally now anyway, so that’s not really relevant.

With Rockstar, I’m not surprised they’re going to go for the highest price they can, because they know people will pay anything. That’s more or less true for things like Call Of Duty and EA Sports FC too but I really don’t think there’s many other games in that category.

But publishers are too greedy to accept that so they’ll just try to charge as much as possible, in the hope that punters will start to treat £60+ as the standard price point.

With all that going on though, and indie prices on the rise, Silksong goes in the opposite direction. It’s dirt cheap for what a big game it is, especially as it’s so critically acclaimed, and what’s happened? 5 million sales in three days.

So that’s… £80 million in revenue in less than half a week. I’m going to bet the whole game didn’t cost anywhere near that much to make, so Team Cherry have absolutely hit the jackpot.

So why doesn’t everyone else do the same? I can get that triple-A games won’t want to go as low as £16 but if they were £30 or £40 I am convinced they would make more money overall. Not only does the maths make sense but the number of people willing to pay £60+ for a new video game are shrinking, not growing.

Even if it wasn’t for the rise of free-to-play games, people just don’t have that much spare cash anymore for video games. And that’s ignoring whether they think they’re worth it, given so many triple-A games are just bland sequels and rehashes.

For me, Silksong is the future. Definitely for indie games and, at least to a degree, for triple-A games. Lower the price, increase the sales. I mean, it’s not rocket science is it? I don’t even care that I don’t like Silksong and probably won’t play it again. I gave it a go and didn’t waste much money finding out what the fuss was about. That’s how things should always be!

By reader Limpton

Cheap enough to take a chance on (Team Cherry)

The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at [email protected] or use our Submit Stuff page and you won’t need to send an email.

MORE: The upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 games line-up is depressingly bad - Reader's Feature

MORE: Why Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy is one of my favourite PS2 era games – Reader’s Feature

MORE: Why my first go on an Xbox 360 become a cherished gaming memory – Reader’s Feature

Comments