Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S (& probably PC) games will increase in price to $70 starting in 2023

[Giddas]

1 minute ago, moosegrinder said:

 

People who aren't tethered to physical games any more. I'd hazard Sony are entirely justified in their price tag because of people who don't want the grief of discs and want games day one.

the main reason I got a ps5 with drive, even though with ps plus and xgp on my series s I haven’t bought many titles anyway

 

 

[bear]

2 hours ago, rgraves said:

 

Have you got GP? I honetly can''t see how anyone could possibly argue it does not provide a decent selection of games on a monthly basis. First-party titles might be slim, but I don't honestly care where they come from as long as games keep popping up - and they do. It's crazy value even at full fat £11 a month really. <insert annecdote about cost of coffee here>.

I have it and yesterday posted about playing through Firewatch because it was leaving Gamepass soon.

 

I just don't think they can realistically talk about increasing prices until they are at a point where they are consistently releasing high quality first party games throughout the year. They don't need to release a game every month but there can't be massive stretches between releases like we got this year.

 

They obviously control first party releases so they're the games they can promise are coming to Gamepass in 6, 12 or 18 months. By all accounts the majority of deals for third party games get done much closer to the time they appear on the service so they can't be trumpeted as far in advance. 

 

Maybe you'll see that as moving the goalposts as I didn't place enough emphasis on the first party element but in my defence, it was getting on and I wasn't arsed to write a longer reply. 

[thesnwmn]

44 minutes ago, Giddas said:

Who actually pays £70 anyway, be surprised if it was anyone on here who is savvy enough to check hotukdeals.

 

Fine, but if the RRP is £70 rather than £50 or £60 you're still most likely paying more. Many people didn't pay £50 or £60 before, even on release, if they were careful and prepared to seek out the best offer. And they won't pay £70 now.

 

But most people will pay more per game at or close to release.

 

Retailers aren't, and shouldn't, be expected to make it so games cost what they did before. They will reduce by the same percentages as before. Maybe some will try to use it to take a little more margin than before but whether that sticks depends on their competitors.

[Benny]

I paid a pittance for my current month of Game Pass recently, for which I played through both Return to Monkey Island and Pentiment. So I guess I should really be thanking Microsoft for contributing funds to my heating bill.

[scoobysi]

At least the increased price of games means I’m buying fewer but getting better value from those I do buy, by playing them longer/completing them. If I need to spend over £50 on a game then I’m probably not buying it on release.

[rafaqat]

3 hours ago, David Kenny said:

Who are you talking to? I don't remember anybody cheering about Sony raising the price of their games. Although they probably didn't think of it as being fucked over either. You make a choice whether it now represents enough value for you and act accordingly. (I think I've bought one game at launch since they did it (GT7) and it was definitely worth the price I paid). Now we'll have to make the same judgement about Microsoft's games. When they release some! Am I right?!

 

Obviously this could be a clever ploy to make Gamepass more attractive when they stop the Gold Ultimate upgrade cheat. A "free" 70 quid game is better than a "free" 60 quid game.

 

I firmly belive if people had just said "no thanks to 70 quid games, we'll wait for the price to drop we wouldn't be here" Instead we had people arguing that 70 was still value for money for a game in todays climate.  That's fair enough if they think that's good value. But it signalled to other companies that the market was ok with it.  I'm not sure why people in this thread are find that so hard to understand and instead want to talk about sentence structure or flag waving for certain corps.  I think the people who were fine with it fucked everyone else with their weak ass game buying.   Oh noooees  I won't be able to play at launch.

[b00dles]

Wasn't there something recently where the publishers said that they shot themselves in the foot by not having upped prices during the last gen? 

That's why now the jump to £70 seems a much bigger leap when in fact they've cost more to make for a while but the 40 quid price mark hung about for ages (in general).

[David Kenny]

8 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

 

I firmly belive if people had just said "no thanks to 70 quid games, we'll wait for the price to drop we wouldn't be here" Instead we had people arguing that 70 was still value for money for a game in todays climate.  That's fair enough if they think that's good value. But it signalled to other companies that the market was ok with it.  I'm not sure why people in this thread are find that so hard to understand and instead want to talk about sentence structure or flag waving for certain corps.  I think the people who were fine with it fucked everyone else with their weak ass game buying.   Oh noooees  I won't be able to play at launch.

I don't think someone who uses the phrase "Sony nobs" gets to complain about flag waving for corps. 

[mikeyl]

RIP to all the For the £Players! £70 lollolol jokes.

[Uzi]

Those lads are funny. 

 

U sony Bois means my xbox games cost more now waahhhhh! 

 

Same individual : (has game pass or buys the games from xbox Argentina or something) 

[rafaqat]

15 minutes ago, David Kenny said:

I don't think someone who uses the phrase "Sony nobs" gets to complain about flag waving for corps. 

 

Why?  What other players were paying 70 quid and telling us it was value for money on this forum?   Was it the PC people?

MS are nobs for following with the same price point.   There hope that makes you feel it's more balanced.

[JPL]

6 hours ago, thesnwmn said:

As for rewatching stuff. Well you can replay a game or have multiple people play that (to a much lesser degree I admit on that later one).

I’ve replayed the original Halo far more times than I’ve watched any film.

[Haribokart]

8 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

Why?  What other players were paying 70 quid and telling us it was value for money on this forum?

 

Yeah man, everyone was saying this!!!!!

[Majora]

I doubt this is going to bring in that much extra money for Microsoft, there has been an extremely noticeable dip in the sales of their first party games since Gamepass came along. I assume it's mainly a precursor to justify putting the price of Gamepass up soon. Hopefully not before my three years run out in February 🙏

[PaB]

22 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

 

Why?  What other players were paying 70 quid and telling us it was value for money on this forum?   Was it the PC people?

MS are nobs for following with the same price point.   There hope that makes you feel it's more balanced.

£70 for a game being a good value proposition depends entirely on the individual. It costs what it costs. You either pay it or you don’t. Blaming the entire inevitability of rising costs driving game prices up on people for deciding that £70 still represents a fair price to them is pretty dumb. 

This was inevitable. Sony just blinked first. 

 

spoiler: hardware costs will also go up for Xbox at some point in the new year . 

[Siri]

On a related note, can anybody remember how much XBox 360 games were at launch? I could have sworn it was £60 and I could only afford PGR3 at launch with the console (the basic one without a hard drive), but my memory escapes me.

 

I remember it being quite a shock after being used to the PS1 and PS2's  Platinum range and the eventual wave of hooky games, although the import scene always commanded a high price on whatever bullshit was on the shelves before import websites became popular.

[bradigor]

2 hours ago, Eighthours said:

£70 is too expensive for games, but even a bit below that is too. Midnight Suns lost a sale at the weekend when I checked out the store, and hidden among the ridiculous versions was its cheapest one: £64.99. NOPE.

 

You could have had it for £27 from me

[MattyP]

15 minutes ago, Siri said:

On a related note, can anybody remember how much XBox 360 games were at launch? I could have sworn it was £60 and I could only afford PGR3 at launch with the console (the basic one without a hard drive), but my memory escapes me.

 

I remember it being quite a shock after being used to the PS1 and PS2's  Platinum range and the eventual wave of hooky games, although the import scene always commanded a high price on whatever bullshit was on the shelves before import websites became popular.

Think the RRP was £49.99? I think generally they were £45 at retail though.. PGR3 was £45 IIRC...

[Giddas]

57 minutes ago, Haribokart said:

 

Yeah man, everyone was saying this!!!!!

I wanted it to be £80

[rafaqat]

59 minutes ago, Haribokart said:

 

Yeah man, everyone was saying this!!!!!

 

Enough people were saying it and buying the games.  But lets nitpick instead.  yes. That's much better to focus on.  

[JoeK]

4 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

 

Enough people were saying it and buying the games.  

 

Well, if you think the general public will stop jumping to the whip of Sony and MS and shockingly rebel against their pricing structure, I suspect you might be waiting an awfully long time. 

[rafaqat]

4 minutes ago, JoeK said:

 

Well, if you think the general public will stop jumping to the whip of Sony and MS and shockingly rebel against their pricing structure, I suspect you might be waiting an awfully long time. 

 

Its got to start somewqhere though right?  Enough people ridiculed MS for the TV TV TV aproach and the DRM approach and they changed it.  It doens't take universal criticism.  Just enough to form a prevailing opinion.  It's happened on lots of things before. Just a shame that enough people decided that 70 was fine. Even before the rising costs of living became a mainstream discussion point.

 

 

 

[JoeK]

I still think that in comparison to other sources of entertainment, there's still value in a good game. Even - dare I say it - at £70. 

 

We were paying the equivalent in the 80s and 90s with cartridge games, and quite honestly the cd-era when prices came down was almost an anomaly. 

 

I don't want to pay £70 for a game anymore than the next person does. But I don't begrudge companies for upping their costs. 

 

I also think it's very dependant on just how you play your games. I'm a serial re-player of my collection. A huge chunk of my games have been played for hours on end, and the cost per gaming is pathetically low! But I do know an awful lot of people don't game the same way, so - yeah - a game at full whack is going to hurt bucketloads.

 

I should point out that I've yet to buy any game for that top price though - there's always places selling it lower, and as we all know if you wait a couple of weeks things tend to drop spectacularly.

 

 

[Pug]

I paid £70 for Turok on the N64 when it came out, lolololol.

[MattyP]

20 minutes ago, JoeK said:

I should point out that I've yet to buy any game for that top price though - there's always places selling it lower, and as we all know if you wait a couple of weeks things tend to drop spectacularly.

Indeed. For example the PS5 God Of War game is currently being sold for between £30-45 on FB marketplace at the moment. This is what just under a month after release? In another few months it'll be down to £20. You don't even have to wait that long before the prices of new releases drop significantly TBH. 

[Uzi]

12 minutes ago, Pug said:

I paid £70 for Turok on the N64 when it came out, lolololol.

YOU are the reason games are not 50p these days! YOU

 

 

 

(me too, £70 for a game where you couldn't see two feet ahead of you FFS)

[JoeK]

14 minutes ago, Pug said:

I paid £70 for Turok on the N64 when it came out, lolololol.

 

I paid £600 for a US Xbox and Halo back in the day.

 

I regret nothing.

 

NOTHING...

[scoobysi]

29 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

 

Its got to start somewqhere though right?  Enough people ridiculed MS for the TV TV TV aproach and the DRM approach and they changed it.  It doens't take universal criticism.  Just enough to form a prevailing opinion.  It's happened on lots of things before. Just a shame that enough people decided that 70 was fine. Even before the rising costs of living became a mainstream discussion point.

Value is much more subjective though. It’s not the £70 price per se that bothers me (that’s more dependent on the game) more the fact that a game will likely be in a sale or on a subscription service within a few months (if not a launch). It completely undermines the value games in my mind.

[MattyP]

Just now, scoobysi said:

Value is much more subjective though. It’s not the £70 price per se that bothers me (that’s more dependent on the game) more the fact that a game will likely be in a sale or on a subscription service within a few months (if not a launch). It completely undermines the value games in my mind.

This is where Nintendo kind of get it right. They value what they make and hardly ever have things at super low prices even at anywhere in retail. Its mostly £50 and thats it for a Ninty Switch game. Even Mario Odyssey and Zelda after 5 years are still £50.

[K]

I just can't believe none of you guys stepped up and stopped Sony from charging £70 a game. Now *I've* got to pay more. THANKS guys. Great job.