Embracer CEO Says Big Single Player Games Might Have to Raise Prices or Get Shorter

Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors was recently featured in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz about the increasingly challenging reality of triple-A game development.

Just recently, following Embracer's full-year 2023-24 financial report, we learned that the Alone in the Dark reboot sold below the group's expectations. In the interview, Wingefors defended the game's quality but pointed to the need to find the necessary amount of consumers.

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I believe Alone in the Dark was a quality product, and the developers went all in to deliver on that. It's very unfortunate to see that it didn't catch enough consumers out there willing to engage again in that IP and product. It's just a brutal truth. It was a big investment and, ultimately, we need to get those right. It's very tough… At the end of the day, games are a commercial industry and we need to earn money to have a future, to be able to invest, and ultimately we need to find that consumer.

More broadly, the Embracer boss mused on the possibility of raising prices of triple-A games. He believes that, with rising development costs, studios might be forced to either do that or make shorter games.

It's been hard to increase pricing in premium PC/console games. The pricing of those products has been the same for many years, which means that the margin to succeed is less, and on top of that, there is a higher cost of capital.

I'm not saying you can't increase the price. But the reality is no one has tried it. If you create an enormous RPG, for example, with 100 or 150 hours of gameplay, very polished and a unique experience, would the consumer be willing to pay more? If they would, they would have more products potentially coming to market. But no one tried it. It's something we have been discussing, but we are currently sticking to the practice of the industry. Would it be that one company one day that tries to increase pricing? That remains to be seen.

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