India’s Rising Game Prices Expose a Strategic Market Gap

For most of the last decade, India was treated as a textbook “emerging market” in global gaming strategy. It is a price-sensitive region, expected to grow due to its massive population and rapidly increasing technology adoption. That paradigm quietly shifted between 2020 and 2025. During this period, major publishers, including Sony, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft, raised game prices in India far more aggressively than in most other markets. 

The consequences of surging price increases and a lack of regional pricing are that India, as an emerging region, experiences pricing like a high-income one. For an industry that increasingly depends on year-over-year audience growth, it feels like a missed opportunity for publishers who do not price their games appropriately in the country. 

The New Pricing Reality for Games in India

For much of the 2010s, India had strong regional pricing on storefronts like Steam. Games are frequently launched at a fraction of Western prices, supporting healthy adoption and reducing piracy incentives. Today, India’s pricing no longer stands out. In fact, for certain titles, India is priced higher relative to income than many Asian markets. Instead of anchoring India within the global “growth market” category, publishers have placed it closer to high-income markets.

It also does not help that the Indian gaming sector is often associated with mobile gaming, with titles like Free Fire and Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) dominating playtime. PC and console adoption is still lagging, but it is rising. Disposable income is increasing among urban Gen-Z and young professionals. By every metric, India should be a textbook growth region for premium game sales. Yet between 2020 and 2025, the pricing environment for games and gaming subscriptions has undergone a dramatic transformation:

• Sony raised the price of several PC ports by more than 300% compared to their earlier first-party pricing on Steam. One of the most notable examples is Horizon Zero Dawn, which was available for INR 1,098 ($12.22) at launch, but was hiked to INR 3,299 ($36.70) months after its release. Its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, saw a much higher launch price of INR 3,999 ($44.49). 
• Activision Blizzard set certain Call of Duty entries at or above their US-equivalent price after INR conversion. The latest installment in the franchise is priced at INR 5,599 ($ 62.29), which is higher than the standard $60 asking price for current-gen AAA games. 
• Microsoft raised the price of Halo: The Master Chief Collection from INR 849 ($9.45) to INR 3,349 ($37.26). The company has also priced 2025’s DOOM: The Dark Ages at INR 5,999 ($66.76), which makes it one of the most expensive games ever released in India. 

This is not merely a consumer concern. Pricing decisions directly influence revenue and market development. When AAA publishers pursue global price harmonization, the question is not whether Indian consumers can afford these prices, but whether publishers can afford to treat India as a premium market this early in its growth cycle.

India, as a market, simply does not have the same purchasing power as more developed nations, and asking gamers from the country to pay top-dollar prices paints a concerning trend. 

Why Game Prices are Skyrocketing

The industry rarely increases prices arbitrarily. Beneath the surface, there are three likely reasons behind the price hikes. 

Rising Development and Marketing Costs: Most major publishers have adopted some version of the $70 standard that part of the industry has been trying to push. It is a price floor that reflects rising development and marketing costs. Rather than designing bespoke regional pricing matrices, some simply map global prices onto local storefronts with minimal adjustment.

This approach reduces operational complexity but undermines emerging-market elasticity. India is now often grouped with Western markets by default, even though per-capita income differs by more than an order of magnitude.

Protection Against VPNs: Over the last three years, publishers have increasingly targeted VPN-driven price circumvention. Deeply discounted regions such as Turkey and Argentina saw heavy exploitation within the gaming community. 

With that pressure, some companies overcorrected by raising prices in all price-sensitive regions, including India, which historically had regional pricing. India became collateral damage in a global effort to tighten price discipline. Companies like Activision Blizzard and Steam have cracked down on VPN usage, and it has become increasingly hard to use VPNs to buy cheaper games. 

India is a Low-Conversion Region: According to research by KPMG, “In spite of India being home to the second largest base of online casual gamers in the world at 420 million, the monetization levels in terms of Average Revenue per User (ARPU) are amongst the lowest in the world.”

Some global publishers possibly continue to assume that India’s premium gaming audience is too small to justify complex regional pricing models. The belief is that lowering prices would not materially increase full-price conversion, so the effort yields poor returns on investment. 

How Mispricing Games Constrain Long-Term Growth

Hardware and software adoption in gaming rise together. When game prices increase sharply, the incentive for consumers to invest in high-end GPUs or consoles weakens. For platform owners such as Sony and Microsoft, this creates a direct commercial impact. Fewer users buy into the hardware ecosystem, and among those who do, higher software prices reduce attach rates, which is one of the most important indicators of long-term customer value.

Pricing pressure also drives part of the audience toward parallel channels. Grey-market key resellers, international gifting, and shared-account ecosystems become more attractive when local prices feel misaligned. This kind of market leakage reduces the revenue publishers can capture per customer, and clouds the accuracy of regional sales data, making India appear less commercially viable than it truly is.

The effects are most visible in day-one performance. Early sales now play a major role in publisher earnings forecasts and in determining how algorithms surface a title on digital storefronts. When Indian players delay purchases or avoid full-price spending altogether, it depresses launch-period numbers. Over time, this weakens the case for India-specific investment, targeted marketing, or localized pricing models.

The larger consequence is an opportunity cost. India has one of the world’s largest youth populations. While premium PC and console gaming is still a smaller segment, it is growing steadily. If pricing remains out of step with local income levels, adoption slows, not just today, but across an entire generation of potential customers. This misalignment risks delaying the formation of a robust AAA market in what could otherwise be one of the fastest-growing regions globally.

What a Better Pricing Strategy Looks Like

Publishers have several viable paths that allow them to protect revenue today while building a stronger long-term position in India. One approach is to move from currency-indexed pricing to income-indexed pricing. Instead of mapping Indian prices directly to USD exchange rates, publishers can incorporate purchasing power parity (PPP) to create price points that better reflect local income realities. This doesn’t mean lowering margins; it means adjusting the entry price so volume can make up the difference.

Another strategy is to offer structured value rather than blanket regional discounts. Regional launch bundles, franchise collections, limited-time introductory pricing, or tiered access passes that combine a short trial with a discounted upgrade path can maintain a premium brand image while still making entry more attractive. These targeted adjustments often outperform broad price cuts because they provide flexibility without undermining perceived value.

Finally, India should be approached as a volume-driven market, not a margin-maximization one. The real value does not lie in extracting the highest possible price for a single copy of a game, but in building a broad player base that can be monetized over time through DLC, cosmetic microtransactions, season passes, sequels, and subscription services. Lower upfront pricing expands the number of engaged players, raising lifetime value even if the initial unit margin is smaller.

India is entering a pivotal decade. Disposable incomes are rising, gaming culture is becoming mainstream, and more players are transitioning from mobile to hybrid gaming ecosystems. The question is no longer whether India will become a major premium gaming market, but which companies will position themselves to benefit when it does. Publishers that price India as if it were already a mature, high-income market risk stalling the very growth they hope to capture. Those that align pricing with economic realities will build a durable foothold and win over the next generation of players.

In a global industry searching for its next major growth engine, India is not simply another row on a pricing spreadsheet; it has the potential to be one of the most impactful markets in the industry. Experts estimate that the country’s market will triple to $7.8B by 2030. The companies that price for growth, not parity, will define the next era of gaming in the region. Like the creator of ULTRAKILL, Hakita, once said, “Culture shouldn’t exist only for those who can afford it.”