Breaking: Xbox and Microsoft reveal global price increases for consoles, accessories — and even games

If it had been due to tariffs and it only went up the the USA I would understand. I do not understand a price jump this big around the rest of the world.
 
StereoVsn said:
It doesn't matter where Xbox would be. It's one of the biggest corporations in the World. Microsoft's mismanagement shouldn't have been rewarded by allowing them almost unlimited license to acquire 3rd party publishers.

They are irrelevant as far as console competition goes even with the acquisition. That's on them. Allowing market consolidation leads to shitty situations for both employees as well as customers.
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Truth.
 
Mibu no ookami said:
It'll be interesting to see if Sony tries to drop Venom into November, so close to Yotei or if the game will have been cancelled with the passing of Tony Todd and the strike and a focus on Wolverine. I could also see it ending up a Q1 game before GTA6 comes out. Then you have Saros and Wolverine coming out in the summer and fall respectively.
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The most up-to-date schedule of releases, dated November 2023, that came out of the Insomniac leak already showed how Venom had been postponed until 2027, as part of the studio's plan to hit three consecutive years of +400M yearly revenue with the back-to-back releases of Wolverine, Venom and Spider-Man 3 in '26, '27 and '28, respectively.

What Sony might have in store for sometime later this year (now that GTA VI is out of the way) and early 2026 are both the Guerrilla-developed Horizon live-service game as well as Firesprite's Until Dawn sequel, which is about to reach five years of development some months from now.
 
StereoVsn said:
The whole point of the gov argument was that the consolidation is reducing competition. That would result in ability of Microsoft to raise prices so that was going to be one of the requirements for getting the acquisition through.

And what are we seeing now, precisely that, price increases across the board. Microsoft's market consolidation and mismanagement is resulting into higher prices charged to its customers.
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There was no reduction in competition though. Sony was and still is the overwhelming market leader and also one of the first to raise prices.

We're seeing price increases across the industry, hell across most economies in the world.

Suggestions that these increases by MS are somehow linked to a reduction in competition as a result of the acquisition are a fair bit off the mark.
 
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DaleinCalgary said:
If it had been due to tariffs and it only went up the the USA I would understand. I do not understand a price jump this big around the rest of the world.
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The rest of the world has to pay so the US market don't feel the full force of the tariffs and make the price too high for that one market. Spread the pain.
 
Hero of Spielberg said:
There was no reduction in competition though. Sony was and still is the overwhelming market leader and also one of the first to raise prices.

We're seeing price increases across the industry, hell across most economies in the world.

Suggestions that these increases by MS are somehow linked to a reduction in competition as a result of the acquisition are a fair bit off the mark.
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Of course there was reduction in competition as far as software publishers go. MS bought two major software publishers with Activision being the largest Western publisher.
 
chromatic9 said:
Guess the BOM for these consoles is quite steep, they tried cutting price to no success so they only have so long to stop the losses. Wonder if the GTA 6 delay impacts it as well, I'm sure they get the info earlier and know they can't ride the GTA train until next year at best so they put the prices for a while.
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Good point. And when GTA is finally released MS could drop the price of the Series S again to ensure it is far and away the most cost effective way of playing the game.

GHG said:
There is no value in getting the worst possible experience possible while playing those games on console.
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This is a bit overdramatic, no? We're not talking a difference akin to a multiplat on the Wii vs Xbox 360.
 
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StereoVsn said:
Of course there was reduction in competition as far as software publishers go. MS bought two major software publishers with Activision being the largest Western publisher.
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How did that reduce competition? What has been the detrimental effect for consumers? Has the price of Activision games increased more than others? Do Activision now have less incentive to create a good product or service?

Yes, they are large publishers but they are not the market. They're just one profitable part of an enormous market.
 
Perrott said:
The most up-to-date schedule of releases, dated November 2023, that came out of the Insomniac leak already showed how Venom had been postponed until 2027, as part of the studio's plan to hit three consecutive years of +400M yearly revenue with the back-to-back releases of Wolverine, Venom and Spider-Man 3 in '26, '27 and '28, respectively.

What Sony might have in store for sometime later this year (now that GTA VI is out of the way) and early 2026 are both the Guerrilla-developed Horizon live-service game as well as Firesprite's Until Dawn sequel, which is about to reach five years of development some months from now.
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Are you sure about that? I don't recall seeing it for 27.

After the movie performed poorly and the remake performed poorly, unless the movie finds a niche on Netflix, I would suspect the firesprite game will be canceled.
 
DaleinCalgary said:
If it had been due to tariffs and it only went up the the USA I would understand. I do not understand a price jump this big around the rest of the world.
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They spread the pain. Basically the rest of the world is subsidising US consumers and paying part of their tariff burden. Its sucks and its unfair but it is such a big market distortion that if they didn't do it that way you would end up with some interesting 'grey' market importing going on.

My cynical side also says if they decouple the rises from tariffs in peoples minds they get to keep the high prices if tariffs are reversed down the line. Watch them do exactly that btw. Just like once all the Covid price increases due to logistics never got reversed when logistics issues improved.
 
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Ashamam said:
They spread the pain. Basically the rest of the world is subsidising US consumers and paying part of their tariff burden. Its sucks and its unfair but it is such a big market distortion that if they didn't do it that way you would end up with some interesting 'grey' market importing going on.

My cynical side also says if they decouple the rises from tariffs in peoples minds they get to keep the high prices if tariffs are reversed down the line. Watch them do exactly that btw. Just like once all the Covid price increases due to logistics never got reversed when logistics issues improved.
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Exactly. If they ONLY increased the price in the US, instead of Series X increasing to $599.99 it would be $699.99+

This would effectively kill the Series X completely in their biggest market. So to prevent this they spread the costs amongst different regions to subsidize their increased costs for the US market. Not really sure why some people don't seem to understand this.

It's the same way Nintendo was able to keep from raising their console and game prices, because they instead moved and spreaded out the increased costs to their accessories. Really not a hard concept to understand.
 
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Mibu no ookami said:
Are you sure about that? I don't recall seeing it for 27.

After the movie performed poorly and the remake performed poorly, unless the movie finds a niche on Netflix, I would suspect the firesprite game will be canceled.
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November 2023 (one month ahead of the leak):

229XGJM.jpeg


In regards to Until Dawn, as I've said, the sequel is pretty much done at this point since it's been in development since 2020. They lose nothing by sticking to their plan (remake>movie>sequel) and releasing a complete game that, for all we know, might actually be pretty good, who knows. The original Until Dawn faced similar scepticism ahead of launch and ended up doing great being well received, while Detroit has gone on to sell over 11 million copies over the years.
 
iorek21 said:
I have the impression that our lives went downhill from the Pandemic onwards and things will only get worse and worse.

Prices are increasing worldwide, products are getting worse, quality of life is decreasing, people are overall unhappy and easy to anger.

The 2020s is turning out to be a nightmare of a decade.
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You must have connections. Personally, I have no problem with having connections.
 
Topher said:
lol....2TB XSX costs more than a PS5 Pro

Come On What GIF by MOODMAN
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At least it has a disc drive.

Well those tarrifs are hurting console prices. Also the $ is really weak these days. I guess that's where those increases are coming from. I guess Xbox console sales are now really dead, after those increases.
 
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Dural said:
I'm done with console gaming. Never would I have ever thought that nearly five years into a generation would the price of the console and accessories go up! This is without a doubt the worst console generation. It's like they're trying to create another crash. Retro and PC gaming only for me from now on.
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Your PC gaming is going up too!
 
Allandor said:
At least it has a disc drive.

Well those tarrifs are hurting console prices. Also the $ is really weak these days. I guess that's where those increases are coming from. I guess Xbox console sales are now really dead, after those increases.
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I imagine we will see price adjustments on the PS side as well, but right now the price difference is a bit stark. I really don't think Microsoft cares if you buy an Xbox or not any more.
 
Perrott said:
November 2023 (one month ahead of the leak):
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Am I missing where it says November 2023 on this?

Topher said:
I imagine we will see price adjustments on the PS side as well, but right now the price difference is a bit stark. I really don't think Microsoft cares if you buy an Xbox or not any more.
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Like I said, we're going to see not only how much inventory sony stockpiled, but how well they're able to execute their strategy around this. If they're smart they'll avoid price increases through the holiday season and maybe through GTA6, but they could just increase their prices before GTA6 just to increase them.

Getting market share back in the US has been one of the most difficult things for Sony. Hard to believe they'd pass over this opportunity to significantly shift the market away from Microsoft once and for all.
 
Gambit2483 said:
Exactly. If they ONLY increased the price in the US, instead of Series X increasing to $599.99 it would be $699.99+

This would effectively kill the Series X completely in their biggest market. So to prevent this they spread the costs amongst different regions to subsidize their increased costs for the US market. Not really sure why some people don't seem to understand this.
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They're between a rock and a hard place regardless. The demand for Xbox is practically non-existent in Europe, for example. So when low/zero demand regions flat-out reject the higher prices (because they were rejected at lower ones), where else can they spread the cost at that point? Europeans not buying a Series X at €500 sure as hell ain't buying one at €600.

Out of everyone, Microsoft putting their games on other consoles+ PC means they have the least amount of leverage to increase prices, even in the US but a higher priced Xbox in low demand regions is largely gonna be met with 'lol, lmao even', especially by people who understand they are being asked to subsidize the US due to shit they have no control over ( like what policies coming out of the White House that have far-reaching geo-political consequences).
 
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StereoVsn said:
It doesn't matter where Xbox would be. It's one of the biggest corporations in the World. Microsoft's mismanagement shouldn't have been rewarded by allowing them almost unlimited license to acquire 3rd party publishers.

They are irrelevant as far as console competition goes even with the acquisition. That's on them. Allowing market consolidation leads to shitty situations for both employees as well as customers.
Click to expand...

Well said. We can assume they will close studios when games are not performing moving forward.
 
With this pricing, Microsoft has effectively discontinued the Xbox Series line.

They know that the people who have yet to buy an Xbox are the most price-conscious. They know going first puts them in a position where the PlayStation has significantly better value.

They expect only their core fans to buy at these prices. Normally, when you discontinue a product, you'd clear out inventory at low prices. They're doing the opposite. They're saying, we know we have customers who will be forced to pay for this inventory if they want to stay in our ecosystem. It's a rare situation usually only happening to vaulted products such as collectors editions or special editions.

The signal is pretty clear that they have no more interest in being a hardware manufacturer that sells high volume units.
 
Alan Wake said:
Well said. We can assume they will close studios when games are not performing moving forward.
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Yes, I fully expect smaller studios to be shutdown or repurposed to support larger franchises. At this point Xbox is ABK and you have to maximize value and get ROI on pretty much every software product, which is not the view of a platform holder at least historically.
 
Mibu no ookami said:
With this pricing, Microsoft has effectively discontinued the Xbox Series line.

They know that the people who have yet to buy an Xbox are the most price-conscious. They know going first puts them in a position where the PlayStation has significantly better value.

They expect only their core fans to buy at these prices. Normally, when you discontinue a product, you'd clear out inventory at low prices. They're doing the opposite. They're saying, we know we have customers who will be forced to pay for this inventory if they want to stay in our ecosystem. It's a rare situation usually only happening to vaulted products such as collectors editions or special editions.

The signal is pretty clear that they have no more interest in being a hardware manufacturer that sells high volume units.
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Yep. Their core customers have already bought the Series line for this gen. Anyone fencesitting with an eye towards Xbox at this point would need compelling reasons to grab a console now, and with their games and services now available on other platforms('everything is an Xbox'), the only possible dangling carrot left would be an extremely attractive 'sure, why not?' price. Welp, so much for that.

If someone, no matter where they are in the world, hasn't grabbed an Xbox at this time, why would they at marked up prices?? Their future games are going to PS5 and some to Switch, and PC has been day/date for years, so anyone already in or looking to get into any of those ecosystems has no reason to buy an Xbox console now. I mean, we've been saying that over the last few years with their multiplat approach, but now that's **really** the case with this price hike.

As a third party publisher, the future is bright. As a console stakeholder, this is probably the last gen Xbox sells any single piece of hardware over 20 million. The next Xbox 'console', whatever it is, will be some PC/hybrid and priced even higher than the *now* $729 2TB Series X, alongside their bespoke handheld and they need to convince people to buy that over a Steam Deck or ROG Ally/Legion Go.
 
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Mibu no ookami said:
With this pricing, Microsoft has effectively discontinued the Xbox Series line.

They know that the people who have yet to buy an Xbox are the most price-conscious. They know going first puts them in a position where the PlayStation has significantly better value.

They expect only their core fans to buy at these prices. Normally, when you discontinue a product, you'd clear out inventory at low prices. They're doing the opposite. They're saying, we know we have customers who will be forced to pay for this inventory if they want to stay in our ecosystem. It's a rare situation usually only happening to vaulted products such as collectors editions or special editions.

The signal is pretty clear that they have no more interest in being a hardware manufacturer that sells high volume units.
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Microsoft makes losses per unit sold. At this point, they'd rather want that people actually buy a PlayStation and buy an Xbox game there lol.
 
dragonyeuw said:
Yep. Their core customers have already bought the Series line for this gen. Anyone fencesitting with an eye towards Xbox at this point would need compelling reasons to grab a console now, and with their games and services now available on other platforms('everything is an Xbox'), the only possible dangling carrot left would be an extremely attractive 'sure, why not?' price. Welp, so much for that.

If someone, no matter where they are in the world, hasn't grabbed an Xbox at this time, why would they at marked up prices?? Their future games are going to PS5 and some to Switch, and PC has been day/date for years, so anyone already in or looking to get into any of those ecosystems has no reason to buy an Xbox console now. I mean, we've been saying that over the last few years with their multiplat approach, but now that's **really** the case with this price hike.

As a third party publisher, the future is bright. As a console stakeholder, this is probably the last gen Xbox sells any single piece of hardware over 20 million. The next Xbox 'console', whatever it is, will be some PC/hybrid and priced even higher than the *now* $729 2TB Series X, alongside their bespoke handheld and they need to convince people to buy that over a Steam Deck or ROG Ally/Legion Go.
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I'm going to go ahead and say the future isn't bright as a third party publisher. I don't think you want to be the first AAA publisher at 80 dollars. I think you're going to get the first headwinds. Also I don't think Xbox Gaming Studios, ABK, or Bethesda was on the rise individually. I think their future is layoffs, layoffs, layoffs.

Their only hope (and maybe what they're trying to push for) is increased AAA game prices driving people to GamePass, but I'm confident GamePass Ultimate will probably rise to 25/m by the end of September.
 
Heisenberg007 said:
Microsoft makes losses per unit sold. At this point, they'd rather want that people actually buy a PlayStation and buy an Xbox game there lol.
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Microsoft is at risk of losing billions in royalties from 3rd party sales as well as subscription revenue. I think the idea that they'd prefer people buy on PlayStation is not taking into account long term ramifications.
 
Mibu no ookami said:
I'm going to go ahead and say the future isn't bright as a third party publisher. I don't think you want to be the first AAA publisher at 80 dollars. I think you're going to get the first headwinds. Also I don't think Xbox Gaming Studios, ABK, or Bethesda was on the rise individually. I think their future is layoffs, layoffs, layoffs.

Their only hope (and maybe what they're trying to push for) is increased AAA game prices driving people to GamePass, but I'm confident GamePass Ultimate will probably rise to 25/m by the end of September.
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I suppose you could say the jury is out on them being a third party publisher, but they have more flexibility to pivot where needed to keep Gamepass moving along then on the hardware side. I really don't see the point in investing R&D in another round of hardware,but they seem dedicated to giving it a go for at least another gen.
 
MS seems to want to put Steam on its consoles, there they will lose billions in revenue from the sale of third-party games (even from the first ones they will lose 30%), Xbox is going to die as a platform.
 
Mibu no ookami said:
Microsoft is at risk of losing billions in royalties from 3rd party sales as well as subscription revenue. I think the idea that they'd prefer people buy on PlayStation is not taking into account long term ramifications.
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They know people love collecting controllers like they're Jordan's.
 
dragonyeuw said:
I suppose you could say the jury is out on them being a third party publisher, but they have more flexibility to pivot where needed to keep Gamepass moving along then on the hardware side. I really don't see the point in investing R&D in another round of hardware,but they seem dedicated to giving it a go for at least another gen.
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As long as they have GamePass Ultimate on PC and Xbox, they're going to see significant value loss and they're always going to be looking to cut expenses to make GamePass profitable. The fewer subscribers the worse it's going to get.

The math just isn't there. You could play oblivion and Expedition 33 in a month maybe two for 40 bucks... That's 60 dollars in lost value. Fortunately enough they probably didn't spend much on Expedition 33 since it was 3rd party, but the point stands.

This is all before getting into Microsoft's practices on contractors...

I don't see any upside to them as a purely 3rd party publisher, at least as long as GamePass exists... I can see them weeding out GamePass users and refunding those who have it stacked.
 
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Horseganador said:
MS seems to want to put Steam on its consoles, there they will lose billions in revenue from the sale of third-party games (even from the first ones they will lose 30%), Xbox is going to die as a platform.
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The only way to make this work from a standpoint of profitability is to sell the hardware at an extreme premium and to limit R&D costs, i.e. going as off the shelf as possible. It also puts them in direct competition with a future Steam Machine that is going to have direct support from Valve...

Even worse if people are buying Xbox first party games via Steam meaning you're making even less on your own games.

One clarification though is that it's closer to 20% than 30%.
 
Mibu no ookami said:
Microsoft is at risk of losing billions in royalties from 3rd party sales as well as subscription revenue. I think the idea that they'd prefer people buy on PlayStation is not taking into account long term ramifications.
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For sure. They're more interested in short-term profits and have accepted their loss / the fact that they will never be able to become a main gaming console.

Had they made the right decisions, they'd be in a position to earn billions of dollars. But Xbox management is neither that ambitious nor that capable.
 
Topher said:
I imagine we will see price adjustments on the PS side as well, but right now the price difference is a bit stark. I really don't think Microsoft cares if you buy an Xbox or not any more.
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The very first time I saw this thread title I removed the colon in my mind and saw it as "Breaking Xbox..." I think my subliminal mind knows something. :LOL:
 
Woopah said:
Somy managed some very soft YoY drops with the PS4, I think they could repeat the same with PS5 if the circumstances are right.
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Unknown? said:
If they have more good promotions during the holidays like last year then I think it will.
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PS4 had price drops. Even with the same promotions this year, you're going to see at least a 30% drop at current pricing and current patterns. That would take you to 12.6 million units. No GTA6..., maybe a little help from Xbox gets you to 13 to 13.5 million units, assuming Sony keeps their pricing the same.

We're going to see their forecast in just over a week.
 
Unknown? said:
Your PC gaming is going up too!
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How bad is the increase in prices on PC components? we are not seeing it in the UK + Europe and prices are staying stable if not falling due to the dollar / GBP.

Isn't PC components exempt from Trumps tariffs or did I see it wrong? I thought GPUs were exempt etc.
 
Tariffs on china down to 30%.

Sony might be able to get away with a smaller price increase, like $50 if they can't absorb the tariffs.
 
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