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Microsoft Raising Prices on New, First-Party Games Built for Xbox Series X|S to $70 in 2023

I'm honestly expecting a price increase on Game Pass or consoles (if not both) in the coming months. I don't think it was a coincidence Phil was talking about increasing prices and a few weeks later they drop this, after christmas all bets are off, it could happen at any time. I'm just surprised how some people still in denial after this, lol.

When people like you talk about a game pass price increase, what level of price increase are you suggesting is coming? $20? $10? $30?

Stop saying price increase without saying what a hypothetical price increase would look like. What would it be? $2?

The value of game pass wouldn't change one bit with even a slight price increase.
 
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R6Rider

Gold Member
Halo Infinite Campaign, Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, Flight Simulator are all first party releases from Microsoft. Skyrim Anniversary Edition and Age of Empires 4. I can go on.
what GIF
 

twilo99

Member
That is what it comes down to basically. It highly depends on someone's gaming habits. If someone is only interested in two of those games and likes to own, they are looking at $150 vs $180.

Gaming subscriptions, like subs for music/movies could get everyone used to the idea that they don't need to own their games....which is already happening on one side of gaming.

I have zero desire to own any video games, it’s disposable entertainment, so subscription is best case for me.
 
That’s true, but imo not every game is worth $70 or a price increase even with inflation. I remember literally everyone was ripping Sony apart for charging $70 for first party games so I’m just wondering if that same energy will be applied to Microsoft.
Different things are worth it or not worth it depending on the person. Some people see $70 value in a game where others might not. You can buy it or not buy it.

Maybe it’s Chocobo Racing and most of us yawn and say it’s not worth it, but maybe you have kids and you’ll play it with them for hundreds of hours.
 
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Jigsaah

Gold Member
Phil did say he was gonna raise the price of some things. If it had to be anything I'm glad it's just their first party titles, though I doubt a Gamepass price hike isn't too far off.

They raise the price to entice people to get Gamepass...then once everybody's hooked on Gamepass they raise Gamepass' price too. Genius...evil...evil genius.
 

Roxkis_ii

Member
Microsoft isn't abandoning game sales and they are still part of the gaming business as a publisher. This wasn't an EA, Ubisoft, Sony thing. This has been an industry thing. Microsoft is just now officially recognizing the price increase. They were also late to do so when we went from $49.99 to $59.99 — back then, the promise was, all MS first party games would be $49.99 but it didn't last long.

I understand MS isn't the first company to raise prices, but my question is what's the point. If Xbox games are released day and date on game pass, who would pay that $70, instead of grabbing game pass for a month?
 
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sainraja

Member
I understand MS isn't the first company to raise prices, but my question is what's the point. If Xbox games are released day and date on game pass, who would pay that $70, instead of grabbing game pass for a month?
People do still buy games and so far that hasn't changed. In the future, it might and we will see what happens to game pricing then. It is also not about being first or last, if that is some sort of a consolation prize then sure, I guess the "Xbox" folks can have that....but Microsoft was always going to raise prices. It was an industry move and anytime that has happened, everyone has followed suit and this latest news by MS shows that.

It is only a surprise to those who were thinking Microsoft would never do that.
 
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sainraja

Member
I have zero desire to own any video games, it’s disposable entertainment, so subscription is best case for me.
Subscription services also lack choice since we all know that not every game there is, is going to be available on a subscription. So it all depends on how someone plays games. For someone who does it casually, not sure if having a gaming sub makes sense when they can just drop $40-$70 on whatever game they are interested in but habits are evolving so we shall see.
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
I understand MS isn't the first company to raise prices, but my question is what's the point. If Xbox games are released day and date on game pass, who would pay that $70, instead of grabbing game pass for a month?
That's the point.

They raise the price to entice people to get Gamepass...then once everybody's hooked on Gamepass they raise Gamepass' price too. Genius...evil...evil genius.
 
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graywolf323

Gold Member
Microsoft isn't abandoning game sales and they are still part of the gaming business as a publisher. This wasn't an EA, Ubisoft, Sony thing. This has been an industry thing. Microsoft is just now officially recognizing the price increase. They were also late to do so when we went from $49.99 to $59.99 — back then, the promise was, all MS first party games would be $49.99 but it didn't last long.
they used Halo 3 as the reason to justify breaking that promise back then IIRC

also why are the xbox fanboys acting like it's okay now because of inflation as if that wasn't a thing back in 2020? look at how much $60 from 2006 was worth in 2020 due to inflation, yes it's gotten even worse these past 2 years but just own the fact you're massive hypocrites who only cared because this was a line of attack on your hated rival & now that your side is doing it you're trying to bury this as if it's no longer a big deal/now it's okay

I wouldn't be surprised if MS always planned on this with when Forza & Starfield released, they likely would have done it last month if they hadn't had to delay Starfield
 
When people like you talk about a game pass price increase, what level of price increase are you suggesting is coming? $20? $10? $30?

Stop saying price increase without saying what a hypothetical price increase would look like. What would it be? $2?

The value of game pass wouldn't change one bit with even a slight price increase.
Chill, no one is saying the price is going up by $30, I think everybody in their right mind expects a $5 dollar increase at most. And yeah, the value is still there. But as with every price increase, some won't care but others will.
 

Three

Member
Let's not for the Horizon update was under duress. And it was a kinda scummy how they still made it hard to get the savings.


When you don't understand the difference between Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West why do you decide to talk nonsense to defend your beloved MS and live up to your tag?
 
Please do!
Go On Popcorn GIF

Gears Tactics, Gears 5 Hivebusters story DLC. Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood expansion at the start of 2021, High Isle expansion for ESO at the start of 2022, Fallout 76 has had like 9 major expansions, Sea of Thieves has had a few also. Forza Horizon 5 got its hot wheels DLC. Grounded's full release, which is amazing with the story and all the additional updates, Pentiment just released. Halo Infinite also just got a big surprise update and had its winter update that brought a lot of big new features and updates. They literally as of today just dropped a range of surprise additions in a new update, even the customs games browser, months ahead of when they said it would be ready, they made all existing armor cores thus far free to all players, and made desync fixes among other things.

Microsoft's first party overall is a lot busier than people think.

People still isolate Microsoft down to the smaller operation their first-party use to be. It's so much bigger and broader now. People shouldn't confuse first party to not mean expansions for big expansions for existing titles. Live Service is a big part of the Xbox portfolio also.


Chill, no one is saying the price is going up by $30, I think everybody in their right mind expects a $5 dollar increase at most. And yeah, the value is still there. But as with every price increase, some won't care but others will.

You're right, but that's the point I was kinda making. People don't like to mention what the actual price increase they envision because they know it won't be that high or be this massive deal breaker that kills the value for what would now be $70 first party titles? When Microsoft introduced ultimate, it came with added value of EA Play and PC + Xbox Game Pass along with a range of other perks. Even the family plan for Game Pass is an insane value at $25 for sharing with up to 4 other friends or family members.
 
The price increase will be used to push the idea that the service is now even more appealing ,”70 dollar games Day one in the service. Thanks Gamepass. Thanks Phil” and so on. It’s all a bit too predictable. It’s probably why games with gold is so shite too. They are so all in on this subscription service it’s friggin boring to me.

Given this news I wonder if they will show anything at the game awards.
 
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Not new games, but certainly something I have not played before. But I have not played Grounded yet.

Not sure what either of them have to do with The Last of Us though.

This was your original statement:
Didn't release a game this year? They did release several, all of them rather good. They were not AAA games certainly, but they were games.

So in what universe did microsoft release several games this year (and they count cause you haven’t played them) and the last of us not count as one of those releases for sony (which plenty of people also haven’t played) i don’t get the logic.

If thats the case Sony also released their Returnal and Destiny expansion
 
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EDMIX

Member
This should be a shock to no one.

They didn't have $70 prior because they literally didn't put out ANY next generation ONLY titles out yet.

Sony on the other hand had several along with other publishers, thus the price reflected that. So that wasn't a "never", that was simply "we don't have a next gen only game yet".

....thats it.

I said that many times btw as I don't really know why people made it sound like the price difference was some moral or company policy or something weird like that, it was merely based on them not having a next gen only title. Why anyone thought MS was really going to take some L and keep the same price for yet another generation is beyond me, I don't think any major publisher has made any fucking statement arguing they are keeping last gen prices and just taking a hit for feels or something lol.

If some of you believed that, that is your fault, not MS, they never once promised otherwise for folks to be reacting this way.

Like, shit its nice and all that Capcom has RE4 remake at 59.99 on PS5 and Series X...but folks, don't go around this dumb logic that it MUUUUUST mean they are doing that 100% for all titles this gen.

High tides raise all ships and this is good and healthy for the industry. Not all games need to be bought day 1, but a least let developers get their return by those day 1 buyers.

Buy used, wait for a sale, wait for PS Plus, Gamepass etc.

Trazyn the Infinite Trazyn the Infinite lol be like "ok, but they were forced to by gun point by SONY, EA"
 
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Gears Tactics, Gears 5 Hivebusters story DLC. Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood expansion at the start of 2021, High Isle expansion for ESO at the start of 2022, Fallout 76 has had like 9 major expansions, Sea of Thieves has had a few also. Forza Horizon 5 got its hot wheels DLC. Grounded's full release, which is amazing with the story and all the additional updates, Pentiment just released. Halo Infinite also just got a big surprise update and had its winter update that brought a lot of big new features and updates. They literally as of today just dropped a range of surprise additions in a new update, even the customs games browser, months ahead of when they said it would be ready, they made all existing armor cores thus far free to all players, and made desync fixes among other things.

Microsoft's first party overall is a lot busier than people think.
"Microsoft" had nothing to do with ESO or F76. These were in development for *years* prior to any purchase. You don't just create an expansion in under a year. Trying to use *any* game from the Bethesda purchase as props to MS for "being busy" is silly. You are trying to desperately attribute work that was done by others to MS in a sad and pathetic effort to bolster their poor recent history.

Here is what they *actually* have done since 2021:
Released Age of Empires II: Lords of the West expansion (Freakin' fantastic!)
Released Age of Empires IV (A decent, but flawed new sequel that clearly needs a ton of work - but has promise)
Forza Horizon 5 (A glorified expansion pack to FH4 and one of the worst games in the franchise)
Halo Infinite (A complete and utter failure that has caused many to leave the company, lose their positions, and pissed off many long time fans)
Removed the DRM from Xbox Series X (Which should never have been implemented to begin with).

Now, that is completely disregarding GamePass which, admittedly, had an amazing year. With the studio acquisitions, it only further bolstered the fantastic line up of titles you can play. Major props to them for that as it is a legitimately fantastic service and with tens of thousands of hours of fantastic games.

People still isolate Microsoft down to the smaller operation their first-party use to be. It's so much bigger and broader now. People shouldn't confuse first party to not mean expansions for big expansions for existing titles. Live Service is a big part of the Xbox portfolio also.
No, you are the one confused here. Also stop defending "live service". Its a fucking joke and ruins game design. Halo Infinite and AoE4 suffered greatly because of this cancerous design. FH5 is a joke as well with copy paste content that feels as unrewarding as it could possibly feel. All in an effort to create "GAAS". This mindset is killing games that could otherwise be far, far better.

You're right, but that's the point I was kinda making. People don't like to mention what the actual price increase they envision because they know it won't be that high or be this massive deal breaker that kills the value for what would now be $70 first party titles? When Microsoft introduced ultimate, it came with added value of EA Play and PC + Xbox Game Pass along with a range of other perks. Even the family plan for Game Pass is an insane value at $25 for sharing with up to 4 other friends or family members.
And yet who was the one who routinely stated that Xbox would "never" raise prices and how great their services were? You are as transparent as they come.
 

EDMIX

Member
"Microsoft" had nothing to do with ESO or F76. These were in development for *years* prior to any purchase. You don't just create an expansion in under a year. Trying to use *any* game from the Bethesda purchase as props to MS for "being busy" is silly. You are trying to desperately attribute work that was done by others to MS in a sad and pathetic effort to bolster their poor recent history.

Here is what they *actually* have done since 2021:
Released Age of Empires II: Lords of the West expansion (Freakin' fantastic!)
Released Age of Empires IV (A decent, but flawed new sequel that clearly needs a ton of work - but has promise)
Forza Horizon 5 (A glorified expansion pack to FH4 and one of the worst games in the franchise)
Halo Infinite (A complete and utter failure that has caused many to leave the company, lose their positions, and pissed off many long time fans)
Removed the DRM from Xbox Series X (Which should never have been implemented to begin with).

Now, that is completely disregarding GamePass which, admittedly, had an amazing year. With the studio acquisitions, it only further bolstered the fantastic line up of titles you can play. Major props to them for that as it is a legitimately fantastic service and with tens of thousands of hours of fantastic games.


No, you are the one confused here. Also stop defending "live service". Its a fucking joke and ruins game design. Halo Infinite and AoE4 suffered greatly because of this cancerous design. FH5 is a joke as well with copy paste content that feels as unrewarding as it could possibly feel. All in an effort to create "GAAS". This mindset is killing games that could otherwise be far, far better.


And yet who was the one who routinely stated that Xbox would "never" raise prices and how great their services were? You are as transparent as they come.

Agreed completely.

Its a fucking joke and ruins game design. Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite had no business even using such a model and they should have just stuck to what worked in the past with that IP. Not everything needs to be a GAAS.

And yet who was the one who routinely stated that Xbox would "never" raise prices and how great their services were? You are as transparent as they come.

I don't even know why anyone would do or think this either. They are a business, even if I like a publisher, I have to assume they wish to still do business, thus will increase to $70 when they do put out a next gen only title. I'm shocked anyone really thought they wouldn't raise the price when those next gen only titles rolled out.

Development isn't cheap, those acquisitions weren't cheap and MS wants a return like any business.
 
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Halo Infinite had no business even using such a model and they should have just stuck to what worked in the past with that IP. Not everything needs to be a GAAS.
Exactly. Even then, you can still have a "live service" style update system with a fully released and complete game. We had that for literal decades with updates, patches, and "map packs", which are still the better choice. Yes it "splits" the player base, but it also must be stated that buying things online back in 2007 was a lot less common than buying things online in 2022. Ultimately they are going to end up spending *more* money and time to make this game at the state it should have been at launch and piss off/push away customers.

Hopefully with the shake ups at 343i we can see a proper Halo game in the future. But honestly MS should have put their foot down LONG before this.

I don't even know why anyone would do or think this either. They are a business, even if I like a publisher, I have to assume they wish to still do business, thus will increase to $70 when they do put out a next gen only title. I'm shocked anyone really thought they wouldn't raise the price when those next gen only titles rolled out.
The thing is, they *have* been raising prices across the world. Just wasn't in most western markets until now. India in particular has received the brunt of the price increases up until now. But when you bring this up to folks like the aforementioned in this thread, they dismiss it/handwave it away/move goalposts.

Development isn't cheap, those acquisitions weren't cheap and MS wants a return like any business.
Exactly. Price are going to increase, at least for AAA games. They *have* to if they want to continue to balloon budgets to the size we saw with games like Halo Infinite. 150,000,000? That isn't chump change.
 
When you don't understand the difference between Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West why do you decide to talk nonsense to defend your beloved MS and live up to your tag?
What nonsense are you talking about? The video I linked was clearly about Forbidden West. Zero Dawn was given away for free. I was talking about charging extra for cross generational titles. Sony said it would get a free upgrade, reneged, then promised it again only to make getting the savings difficult. You also realize Sony never made a PS5 version for Zero Dawn so it is irrelevant to the point I was making.
 

Three

Member
You also realize Sony never made a PS5 version for Zero Dawn so it is irrelevant to the point I was making.
Horizon Zero Dawn got a 60fps patch for PS5. You replied to somebody who said this
PS also didn't charge any $ for 60 FPS updates. TLOU 2, God of War, Days Gone, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, etc: all those games got the free 60 FPS update.
With this
Let's not for the Horizon update was under duress.

Then continued to babble on about Horizon Forbidden West getting a free update by force.
 

Zathalus

Member
This was your original statement:


So in what universe did microsoft release several games this year (and they count cause you haven’t played them) and the last of us not count as one of those releases for sony (which plenty of people also haven’t played) i don’t get the logic.

If thats the case Sony also released their Returnal and Destiny expansion
As Dusk Falls and Pentiment. Grounded if you count a final release of an early access game. So they have released some games, none of them AAA as I mentioned. Absolutely not a good year for them in terms of releases, which I have not argued otherwise. I was arguing against the point that they didn't release a game this year, which is factually untrue.
 

scydrex

Member
Microsoft isn't abandoning game sales and they are still part of the gaming business as a publisher. This wasn't an EA, Ubisoft, Sony thing. This has been an industry thing. Microsoft is just now officially recognizing the price increase. They were also late to do so when we went from $49.99 to $59.99 — back then, the promise was, all MS first party games would be $49.99 but it didn't last long.

As i remeber it. As soon MS launched the 360 they increased the price from 50 to 60.
 
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