Microsoft Confirms Price Hikes for Xbox Series X/S Games

Microsoft has officially raised the price cap of their games from £60 to £70 citing higher budgets and production quality of new Xbox titles:

"This price reflects the content, scale, and technical complexity of these titles. As with all games developed by our teams at Xbox, they will also be available with Game Pass the same day they launch."

This hasn’t come as a surprise for those following Microsoft’s gaming news- as Xbox Executive Phil Spencer recently hinted at the increasing price of first-party titles going into 2023. This will include all of the large, expected AAA games from Microsoft studios directly next year. This means that games from studios owned by Xbox (such as Bethesda and Obsidian) will follow the same trend- with exceptions for smaller-scale projects.

Starfield, Forza Motorsport and The Outer Worlds 2 have already been confirmed to be given this price hike- meaning its likely that any other big budget 2023 release will receive the same treatment. This follows the recent trend from publishers such as Ubisoft, EA and, of course, Playstation- who have all steadily increased the cost of new releases to the £70 mark. This makes the decision to rise the prices of Xbox Studio Games less heinous than it may have been two or three years ago. Nevertheless, the increase is still impactful and it poses a greater question: what else will Xbox increase the price of?

With Phil Spencer and Microsoft spokespeople being slightly cagey on the matter, its likely that we’ll eventually see a price bulge for Xbox Series consoles and Game Pass sometime in the next couple of years. With PlayStation already bumping up PS5’s by £30, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Xbox follow suit. Xbox Game Pass is another service that will fall victim to an increased price- especially considering the value that it will provide players in 2023.

With Starfield, Redfall and every other Xbox first party game coming to Game Pass for free on day one, a bump in price wouldn’t be all too surprising. We’ve already seen the same happen to Netflix- with the £6 a month subscription rocketing to £11 in recent years. When a service continues to grow and gain value, the provider is forced to increase their prices or lose out on profit- which is certainly something Microsoft does not want to let happen. Given that all of the newly announced £70 games will be coming to Game Pass, this shouldn’t affect most Xbox gamers. Let’s just hope that the service won’t increase its price too much to make up for it.