Borderlands 4 launches in September, and the head of its developer claims he doesn’t know what the price will be. Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford was asked at PAX East today if he could reveal the game’s price point, and he said it could be more or less than what people expect.
“I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know,” he said. “That is the truth.”
“It’s an interesting time. On one level, we’ve got a competitive marketplace where people who make [pricing] choices want to sell as many units as possible and they want to be careful about people that are price-sensitive,” he added. “So there are some folks who don’t want to see prices go up, even the ones deciding what the prices are. There are other folks accepting the reality that game budgets are increasing and there are tariffs for the retail packaging. It’s getting gnarly out there.”
Pitchford went on to say that Borderlands 4 has “more than twice” the development budget of Borderlands 3. He said preorders for Borderlands 4 will open “soon,” and that’s when people can find out the price.
The executive went on to say he wants the game to sell well so Gearbox can reinvest those funds into future products, but as artists, he wants the game to be as accessible as possible to help it reach the widest possible audience. “So it’s a weird thing,” he said about pricing dynamics.
The philosophy regarding pricing in general for Gearbox is for everyone to feel like they got a good deal out of the exchange–that is to say, that Borderlands 4 feels like it’s worth the price, Pitchford said.
“We’re going to have a price set soon. It might be the new price that Nintendo and Microsoft have led with. It might be that we stay back. It’s going to be the people at the publishing house that decide that. We’ll know soon. I think it’s going to be fine, whatever the [price is]. It’s worth it.”
Nintendo is charging $80 for Mario Kart World and Microsoft is raising prices to $80 as well for some games later this year. Another 2K game, Mafia: The Old Country, is going to sell for $50 as part of an intentional bid to appeal to players who don’t have a lot of free time.
