'Grand Theft Auto 6' publisher Take-Two wants video games to be charge by the hour.
The highly anticipated sequel was recently confirmed with developer Rockstar promising a trailer early next month, and now the CEO of the studio's parent company has claimed big budget titles should be priced on their length.
During an investment call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said: "In terms of our pricing for any entertainment property, basically the algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage, which is to say the per hour value times the number of expected hours plus the terminal value that’s perceived by the customer in ownership, if the title is owned rather than rented or subscribed to."
Essentially, his idea is that the price of a game should relate to the number of hours fans would be expected to play it.
That could be an issue for players though, with the main story alone in 'GTA 5' lasting around 32 hours, although fans put in plenty more time completing side quests and exploring the wider world.
He added: "By that standard our prices are still very, very low, because we offer many hours of engagement, the value of the engagement is very high.
"So I think the industry as a whole offers a terrific price to value opportunity for consumers."
However, Zelnick did acknowledge that his proposed model isn't a feasible one for the time being.
He explained: "That doesn’t necessarily mean that the industry has pricing power, or wants to have pricing power.
"However, there is a great deal of value offered, and look, it’s our strategy here to deliver much more value than what we charge consumers, that’s always been our strategy.
"There have been precious few pricing increases in the business. The price increase to, for example, 70 dollars for certain frontline products [in 2022] was the first price increase for many years after many generations.
"So I think we offer terrific value to consumers."
