Xbox’s price hikes could doom its future
Xbox has had a rough year. Leadership has flip-flopped on exclusives, shut down multiple first party studios, carried out mass layoffs, and cancelled multiple games. It’s also facing active BDS boycott due to Microsoft’s ties to the Israeli military. But simple economics may be Xbox’s undoing. The aggressive price increases on Xbox hardware and subscription services have made the broader Xbox ecosystem — Game Pass, Series consoles, ROG Ally handhelds, and the Microsoft Store — increasingly unappealing.
Xbox products are simply too expensive. An Xbox Series X in the US costs $100 more than a PS5 and $200 more than a Switch 2. The upcoming Xbox co-branded ROG Ally X sells for $999, roughly double the price of the market-leading Steam Deck. That’s a problem when Xbox has a smaller game library and customer base than Steam, PlayStation, and Nintendo.
Even with those disadvantages, Xbox’s primary selling point has been their game subscription service Game Pass Ultimate (GPU). While rival services from Nintendo, Sony, mainly feature older games, GPU offers many big budget PC and console titles, including all of Microsoft’s first party lineup, on day one. But GPU now costs a prohibitive $30 per month. That’s the same cost as five full price games over a year, a steep ask when most gamers spend far less on their hobby.
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