IGN has an interesting story up on their site. They’re reporting that after TGS, Impress Watch (Japanese site) updated their editorial gathering and came to a startling conclusion, PS3 games might be noticeably more expensive than once thought. Munechika Nishida writes these updates, and as a well respected Japanese writer for the magazine ‘Ultra One PC Magazine’, most people take his word seriously.

This is some of what IGN’s Anoop Gantayat said:

To most gamers, the most eye-catching part of the feature is a claim about game prices. Citing “multiple information sources,” the article states that the price of PS3 games will be concentrated in the 8,800 to 9,800 yen range[$75 - $85USD raw conversion]. The primary reason given is the rising cost of development.

In Japan, the standard price of a PS2 game is 6,800 yen, with only the biggest titles like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy rising to the 8,800 yen mark.

There’s a deeper story to this price hike. According to the article, Sony was, as of E3, planning to alleviate cost pressures on 3rd parties by lowering royalty costs. The thinking at the time was that users would be able to create their own games and distribute them online throught he PS3, and Sony would not be able to charge royalties for such titles. The company would want to offer 3rd parties a similar pricing environment, with the savings from royalty costs passed on to consumers in the form of lower software prices.

However, this strategy has apparently been put on hold as Sony has been unable to complete preparations for turning the PS3 into an open platform. The article claims that Sony has made no progress in the preparations for allowing users to make their own games. Such preparations include a development environment, manuals, security management and community features.

It should come as no surprise that preparations have been delayed, as the article also claims that even support for 3rd party developers is lagging.

Is this the end of the world? No, it isn’t. Sony just has some work to do with convincing the rest of the world they need a blu-ray player that requires software that’s costly. Between $30(Movies) and $75-$85 (Games).