The cost of everything has gone up and will go up. Yesterdays price is Not todays price? Why people dont understand this? Noone likes a price hike but its the natural progression of consumer products and services.
The only thing you can count on not going up is working class wages.
Doesn't work that way, 2 decades ago they had the same idea and they all died off on PC and cheaper games took over.
PC doesn't work like consoles. U offer something they want to buy and they will simple not buy it.
What square enix does wrong.
1) releases the product on a shop lots of pc gamers do not want to deal with = extremely limited market
2) high price = limit your market even further
3) 2 year old game, that should be cheaper just because of that, but its dated = limit market
4) A non PC game that already doesn't appeal to most pc gamers is = limited market.
5) they probably put invasive DRM in it too = even less people.
At this point. there are so many hurdels for people on PC to jump through they will probably either ignore it or get it in other ways from services that people are more interested in. As newell would say.
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
The proof is in the proverbial pudding. “Prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become [Steam’s] largest market in Europe,” Newell said.
In short this game is much like kingdom hearts going to bomb hard simple because of those reasons.
Now about why should the price not go up because inflation is happening? and prices go up everywhere?
Because PC has a gigantic user base that grows year after year, so there are more consumers that can buy your product.
The reason why sony had to up the price is because there userbase isn't growing, the reason they went multiplatform on there own consoles PS4 + PS5 for horizon / god of war is because they need more buyers, the reason why they move to PC with there games = because they need more buyers. Releasing there titles for 15 million people or whatever amount it is and 10% only buying those titles = simple not doable.
So yea, u either work with your consumers or u get left in the cold.