I think it might be time to stop letting Gearbox head Randy Pitchford tweet about his own games. Just last month, he accidentally shared the fact that Borderlands 4 was getting an earlier than expected release date ahead of an official announcement; he put that one down to time zones. This time his overly eager attitude towards posting hasn’t revealed any information about Borderlands 4 he wasn’t meant to, but it is something that could maybe, just potentially, be viewed as ever-so-slightly out of touch.
Last week, when another Twitter user expressed concern over the upcoming shooter potentially being $80 (a price point hasn’t been set just yet), Pitchford first noted that this is not his call. To be fair to him, I imagine this’ll come down to other people at Gearbox as well as Borderlands’ publisher 2K.
Then, Pitchford thought he’d follow it up with this little nugget: “If you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen. My local game store had Starflight for Sega Genesis for $80 in 1991 when I was just out of high school working minimum wage at an ice cream parlor in Pismo Beach and I found a way to make it happen.”
Now, here’s the thing. For a huge portion of people, even $60 is unthinkable for a game purchase, let alone $80. Second of all, have you seen the economy recently Randy! It’s not great! The Borderlands series is more than 15 years old, a lot of your audience will be regular people with jobs struggling to make ends meet. Not exactly sure you thought through this one all that much, buddy.
Again, no idea if Borderlands 4 will be $80 or not, at a recent PAX East panel (via IGN) Pitchford even said he doesn’t know how much it’ll be. I just think we could perhaps take a little more tact, especially seeing as we don’t know whether $80 games will work or not yet.
