EA Not Planning To Raise Prices On Games Like Nintendo And Xbox

During a recent Electronic Arts earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson was asked if the Madden and Apex Legends publisher was planning to raise games prices, following the recent announcements from the likes of Xbox. And, for now at least, that doesn’t seem to be the plan.

When Nintendo fully unveiled the Switch 2 via a lengthy Direct in April, many were shocked to see the company charging $80 for a copy of Mario Kart World. For the last few years the video game industry has mostly settled on big new games costing $70. But Nintendo broke that barrier with Mario Kart World and upset fans in the process. Then in May, Xbox announced it was also raising game prices on first party titles. So now investors are asking other game companies if they too plan on increasing prices on new games. And surprisingly, EA isn’t going to do that.

On May 6, EA held its Q4 and FY 2025 earnings call and took some questions from various investors. As reported by VGC, during the call one person asked Wilson about the “pricing power” of EA’s franchises and whether the company was going to start “taking a similar approach” to other game publishers who were raising prices.

Wilson replied that the video game industry is “very different” today than it was a decade ago. Back then it was all about selling “discs in plastic boxes” in stores. Now that’s a very small part of EA’s overall business, and they have a wide variety of pricing options from “free-to-play all the way to deluxe editions and beyond.”

“At the end of the day,” said Wilson. “Whether we’re doing something that costs a dollar, or we’re doing something that costs $10, or we’re doing something that costs $100, our objective is always delivering incredible quality and exponential value to our player base.”

EA CFO Stuart Canfield added: “From a games perspective we put out, we have reflected no changes in our current strategy at this point.”

Now, you’ll notice that nowhere in either executive’s comments did they outright promise prices will never go up. In fact, there’s plenty of wiggle room in there for them to one day start selling standard editions of games for $80 or more. But for now at least, it seems like EA doesn’t feel the need to slap an $80 sticker on its next big Star Wars game, and that’s probably because—unlike Nintendo—EA has actually been selling $100 games for some time now via their super-pricey deluxe editions. No need to raise prices for everyone when a smaller portion of your audience is already paying a lot more every year. How long this will stick remains to be seen. But for now, it seems like EA’s upcoming Star Wars: Zero Company won’t be $80.

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