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Microsoft Announces Xbox Console Price Hike, Xbox Games to Cost $80
- ceejayoz 1y agoAs with COVID, companies are gonna use the excuse to raise prices everywhere. The games aren’t shipped over from China. They aren’t imports. And yet…
- explodes 1y agoI guess I didn't realize the tariffs would also have a piggyback effect for ALL goods. Yay.
- workfromspace 1y agoI thought they already had another excuse: "macroeconomic factors and the market"? Or is it only used for when firing people or not increasing salaries?
- throwaway74354 1y agoNever pay more than 20 bucks [1] for a computer game. [1] as of 1990. $48.94 adjusted for inflation.
- mehphp 1y agoDepends on the game for me, there are definitely games that I get $80 worth of value.
- lizardking 1y agoHundreds of hours of enjoyment for $70 seems like a good trade.
- mcphage 1y ago> Hundreds of hours of enjoyment for $70 I'm not sure that $/hour is a great way to evaluate games, since it would encourage developers to pad games out with repetitive content.
- lizardking 1y agoRepetitive content isn't enjoyable :)
- mcphage 1y agoWell… sometimes it is.
- selfhoster11 1y agoThat would be the "hours of engagement" metric, not "hours of enjoyment". The optimist in me hopes that people can tell the difference and disengage if a developer tries to intentionally confuse the two.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ncr100 1y agoWhy?
- throwaway74354 1y agoIt's a quote from «The Secret of Monkey Island». Works as a law of nature unless proven otherwise.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- protimewaster 1y agoXbox already isn't selling well compared to the competition. I imagine this will not help.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> Xbox already isn't selling well compared to the competition. I imagine this will not help. What you want to optimize is (profit per customer) * (number of customers) The economic assumption behind the price increase is that by this change the "profit per customer" increases "more" than "number of customers" decreases. We will see ...
- protimewaster 1y agoFair point. I wasn't thinking just from a pure profit perspective. I was thinking maybe they'd be interested in having a product that's more popular in the marketplace, but maybe this is just them conceding defeat with regard to popularity and trying to squeeze profit.
- daft_pink 1y agoJust watched a video about how they have virtually no unique titles, have compatibility issues between the disc and discless consoles and is a failing platform. Totally shocked they are raising prices like you. https://youtu.be/q9hRCVqxoic?si=z2Ya8jWRReM-Paqu https://youtu.be/q9hRCVqxoic?si=z2Ya8jWRReM-Paqu
- beAbU 1y agoPeople say this, yet my Series X is by far the best expense from my entertainment budget by far. That combined with game pass permium is unreal value for money. I've maybe bought 4 games at full price in the 4 years since I got it. I (and my wife) game on it almost daily.
- Stevvo 1y agoXbox is not focused on selling consoles and games. The focus is on game pass; they have more current subscribers than total consoles sold. This will just push more players to game pass instead of buying physical consoles/games.
- kcatskcolbdi 1y agoSurely the tariffs won't impact digital game prices?
- stubish 1y agoGame prices subsidize the hardware
- ashoeafoot 1y agoThis seems.. unwise if one where to consider the panem and circensis paradigma. Messing with this gets you carried away, out of office on shoulders..
- KMnO4 1y agoI don’t think gamers are as price sensitive as believed. How many people purchased computers that cost in the same realm as a mortgage payment? I personally know a several people who paid >$1500 for a GPU during COVID. The price hike sucks but I doubt it will convince people to transition to a different hobby.
- _mlbt 1y agoMy solution to this is a combination of Game Pass and only buying games on sale. If you’re patient enough there is very little reason to pay full price for games.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1y agoIt’s also worth pointing out that the cost of games has been decreasing over time due to the AAA price remaining stagnant while inflation surges forward. SNES titles in the 1990ish era retailed for $60 USD, which is roughly $145 USD today.
- Copernicron 1y agoI can remember paying $130 CAD for some SNES games back in the day. The price differed from title to title and some of them were really expensive.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago> I don’t think gamers are as price sensitive as believed. I think there are more or less two different useful definitions of gamers. People who do consider it a hobby, ie an area of active interest that they expect to spend considerable amounts of time, money, and attention on. And people who play games as entertainment or recreation only, but still prefer it over other consumption that could fill that time like streaming shows. The time-use patterns might be similar (idk) but the price sensitivity may not be. If console and game prices are low enough it may be impossible to distinguish these two groups even. But at a certain point I expect them to diverge in their playing and spending habits. Like nintendo's astounding success in the wii era was due to specifically targeting the second group. The different characteristics and pricing strategies of PC vs mobile games are a major split between them too. I think if console prices go up enough these groups will diverge even more. The less-price-sensitive "hobbyist gamers" mostly probably won't bail for another hobby, but the "entertainment gamers" certainly may; either for a different kind of gaming or for another source of recreation all together.
- platevoltage 1y agoI get the anger, but I also remember paying $60 for a Nintendo 64 game in 1997.
- ceejayoz 1y agoThose came as physical products with quite a few relatively expensive components. (And often, stuff like a manual.) Versus a couple gigabytes of bandwidth.
- platevoltage 1y agoFair enough. Playstation games were $50.