With the credit crunch still in full flow there's bad news for cash-strapped gamers who will be looking forward to buying some of the big games coming out this Christmas.

Spiraling development costs and exchange rates have been blamed as part of the reason why games, such as Modern Warfare 2 will retail at £54.99! Activision has confirmed that this will be the recommended retail price for its triple-A title, and its believed that other publishers will follow suit.

“You can’t continue to trade as normal when the biggest territory in Europe has seen cost of goods increase by 30 per cent due to the strengthening of the Euro. Publishers somehow need to offset this drastic increase in costs. I’m not surprised to see the [Modern Warfare 2] SRP go up and I feel this will continue across more key title," an unnamed Japanese publisher told MCV.

That's a huge price rise from last Christmas, when triple-A titles cost approximately £40.

Are you willing to pay that much for a videogame, or has the world gone mad? Looking at the release schedule it could mean that games such as Forza 3 and Assassin's Creed II could suffer the same price hike.

Source : MCV