Zemimax’s upcoming 2014 title, The Elder Scrolls Online, has attracted a good deal of attention in the wake of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s on-going success. The recent decision to charge a subscription fee to play TESO has, however, received a mixed response.
The subscription fee will be ￡8.99 per month across all platforms, and the idea behind it is to allow for a more immersive world that a free-to-play model would disrupt. Charging a monthly subscription fee will, according to Zenimax, also enable them to continue releasing new content for The Elder Scrolls Online every 4-6 weeks.
So what will it cost to play this game for a year?
The PS Plus/Xbox Live subscription cost is ￡39.99 annually for current-gen consoles. The respective costs of the next-gen subscriptions have yet to be confirmed, though it seems like a safe bet that they would cost the same or slightly more.
The game itself is the next cost, and though the price has not yet been confirmed for the UK, it will be retailing at $60 in the USA – roughly translating to ￡39.99 – though we do tend to get a slightly rawer deal over this side of the pond, so don’t be shocked if we see it retailing for ￡45 or ￡50 over here.
Those two costs alone bring us up to ￡79.98 in the best case scenario.
A year’s subscription for TESO will amount to ￡107.88 at ￡8.99 per month. That brings you up to ￡187.86. Stick your monthly internet bill on top of that and you’re going to be around ￡200 poorer by 2015, and that’s before we factor in the cost of the actual console. If you are one of the poor souls planning to buy a console specifically to play this game, your total cost will be ￡536.86 for the PS4 version, or ￡616.86 for Xbox One. Plus your internet bill.