It's now official, Borderlands 4 will arrive on September 12th and escapes the GTA 6 tornado since the Rockstar Games game has just been delayed to May 26, 2026. By bringing its release forward by ten days, Borderlands 4 also avoids confrontation with Marathon, the next game from Bungie.
Recently, we were treated to a long presentation of the game during a State of Play and the communication should continue next month, with new gameplay, probably during the Summer Game Fest.
Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction, until a statement from Randy Pitchford, the director of Gearbox and game director of the game, which is having trouble getting through to players.
"A true fan will pay 80 euros"
The price of games is starting to become a hot topic. Although the video game industry has experienced one of the lowest inflation rates since the 90s, the price of games is starting to get quite steep. Now, a base game is sold in most cases for 79.99 euros on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
A price justified by increasing development budgets. Whereas it took 100 people, a year of development, and a budget of $15 million to develop a game on PS2 and Xbox in the early 2000s, it now takes between 300 and 500 people, between three and four years of development, and budgets that can exceed $200 million.
So, fortunately, there are more and more players, and games are selling slightly better than in the early 2000s. But the video game industry remains quite fragile and the right to make mistakes is no longer allowed for a studio.
On the other hand, the cost of living has also increased and video games are increasingly becoming a luxury entertainment. And after the absurd price of 89.99 euros for Mario Kart World, set by Nintendo, this risks opening the door to new excesses in the months and years to come with big blockbusters like Call of Duty, GTA or even EA Sports FC which will be offered at prices higher than 79.99 euros.
It was during an exchange concerning the price of games that Randy Pitchford, the director of Gearbox and game director of Borderlands4 slipped up.
This is what Randy Pitchford, multimillionaire, said when asked about the price of games at 79.99 euros on Twitter/X. A ludicrous statement that shows how totally disconnected from reality the man is, failing to realize that 80 euros is a hell of a sum for many households.
Randy Pitchford supported his comments by giving an example from his youth, when he didn't have much money in the 90s and did everything he could to acquire Starflight on Sega Genesis for 80 dollars.
A response that could undoubtedly compete in the category of the worst possible answers for a CEO. Especially since, according to our colleagues at Kotaku, Randy Pitchford had a very comfortable youth, which makes his example of an ice cream maker on minimum wage a little outdated.
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