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GRTV News - Xbox announces massive ecosystem price hike
Consoles, accessories, and games will now cost more.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of GRTV News.
Today we're going to be talking about Xbox and the mega price hikes that they announced yesterday, basically affecting all parts of the Xbox business, except for Game Pass actually, I should specify that."
"Consoles are getting more expensive, games are getting more expensive, well they phrase it, certain games are getting more expensive, but the point is that Xbox's business model is now going to cost consumers more, and we're not even talking like a small increase here, we're talking a pretty significant increase, so let's dive on in and see what's happening here."
"So Microsoft is raising Xbox games and console prices, games will cost $80 by this Christmas and the Series X and S consoles are going up too.
So Microsoft is raising prices once again, if you thought it was just Nintendo that was going to be selling the bar high $80 games, think again, as the green team has now followed suit alongside a new lot of prices for its hardware and accessories too."
"As per IGN the new prices for consoles and accessories have been enacted from today, the first domain will be applicable worldwide, except for headset prices, those are only going up in the US and Canada.
An Xbox Series X will now cost $599 as compared to $499, an Xbox Series S with 1TB of storage will now cost $429 from $349, and these are just a couple of the changes and you can check out the full list below."
"We understand these changes are challenging and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and rising cost of development, read the statement from Microsoft.
Looking ahead we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen ensuring value for Xbox players."
"So first party games will cost $80 from the holiday season with Call of Duty being a likely frontrunner for a game that will see a price hike, it's unlikely that everything will end up with an $80 price tag but it seems more likely this is going to become the new norm for big releases."
"And this is the UK pricing, so the Series S 512GB model is going up to £300, that used to be the accessible model, one that you could pick up for, you know, even less than like a Nintendo Switch Lite I believe, and now it's going to cost £300, Series S 1TB £350, Xbox X Series X Digital £450, which used to be, well I think the digital version here is still more expensive than the base Series X was when it launched, might be wrong though."
"Series X £500, oh £500 sorry, and then Series X 2TB Galaxy Black Special Edition could set you back £600.
The wireless controller set at £60, coloured one £65, Special Edition £75, Limited Edition £75, the Elite controller is £125 and then the Elite Controller Series 2 with like the full one £170, which by the way I would not recommend you buy one of these controllers because they break very very easily."
"I'm not going to go through it all but if you want to see the Euro pricing it's also there.
Now, I think this is fascinating because Xbox hasn't launched a new console here, it's just made an existing one expensive."
"I'd be surprised if this wasn't to some degree to do with tariffs, obviously inflation is involved here as well, but this is a steep increase in price, a very very steep increase in price.
I mean if you look at it nowadays it costs £500 to get an Xbox Series X, I believe it costs about £600 to get a PS5 Pro."
"So you have to look at it now and go, where's the bar lined up here?
PlayStation hasn't increased the price of the base PS5 model, so it's only Xbox that's looking to change things up here and I think it's strange again because it's not like it's new technology here, or it's not even like it's more recent technology if anything."
"The Series X and the Series S have been out now since 2020 so it's a very baffling decision they've made here and it's got to the point now where gaming is becoming incredibly expensive to pick up as a hobby.
I mean a base Series S with 512GB of storage, which wouldn't you have to assume that the operating system is probably going to eat up a good 100GB of that as well, you can probably store three or four games on it, if that, and it's going to cost you £300 and the games are going to cost, well, £70 plus at this point."
"They haven't exactly said which games are going to be getting more expensive but if you look at Doom The Dark Ages that is now a slightly more expensive game.
It's not an 80, well it is, it's a £70 game now so Doom The Dark Ages is already going to be one of the more expensive games of the year."
"As for what else, as Alex mentioned in the piece there, Call of Duty is probably a candidate but if they're going to do what they did with Modern Warfare 3 and they're going to offer a more subtle and more concise Call of Duty game to sort of plug the gap between the next really big addition, I think people are going to look at that and go, hmm, quite expensive for that era of Call of Duty."
"Otherwise I don't know what else we're going to get later this year that's going to cost that much money.
What it does do is it makes Game Pass even more valuable if you're an Xbox player because first party Xbox games launch on Game Pass and nowadays you can pay for an annual subscription for Game Pass which is probably like £130 or something like that or you can get a game and a half every year."
"The disparity in the price modelling is the most twisted it's ever become and yeah, I look at this and it shocks me to be honest that this is happening because it's so unbelievably expensive.
If you were getting into Xbox gaming today and you wanted a Series X, you wanted a controller or an additional controller, you wanted let's say two or three games and a headset, it's probably going to cost you £1000, maybe more."
"So yeah, it's really baffling this and I think they've gone too far here.
There's got to be a way to balance consumer costs a bit better because if an Xbox Series X can cost £500 in 2025, how much is the next Xbox console going to cost as well?
I've always sort of teased and said that it wouldn't surprise me if the next gen PlayStation 5 or the next PlayStation 6, whatever we're going to call it, if a PlayStation 5 Pro costs £600, £700 or whatever, it wouldn't surprise me if a PS6 is going to cost £800, £900."
"And now this price modelling doesn't do a lot to convince me otherwise.
But again, let me know what you think about it all below.
Is this too far?
Is this too much?
Are you surprised?
Tell me all about it in the comments below and otherwise I'll be back now on Tuesday for the next GRTV News."
"So yeah, I hope you enjoy your weekend and if you're in the UK, your long weekend.
I'll see you on the next one."
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