$80 video games are about to become the new normal
Xbox is hiking the price of its games and consoles, as its gaming revenue grows and its personnel-related expenses drop (hmm). PLUS: Wonderful gaming website Polygon is gutted.
Barely two years since raising the price of its big new video games from $60 to $70, Microsoft is preparing to sell its top titles for $80 this holiday season.
Microsoft said the price increase would kick in for “some of our new, first-party games” later this year.
They offered no details about which games, but given Microsoft’s absorption of a big portion of the industry over the past decade, that $80 price could appear on anything from a new Gears of War game to Activision’s next Call of Duty—or to the next games from Bethesda, Double Fine, Blizzard, Toys for Bob, Arkane Lyon, and more, well into 2026 and beyond.
Microsoft announced the upcoming gaming price hikes today, along with immediate increases for Xbox hardware and accessories in the U.S., U.K., rest of Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
The price increases are part of some bigger trends in the gaming industry, but they are also another sign of the pressure on Microsoft’s gaming business. We got some fresh numbers about that yesterday.
More on the price hikes below, including some numbers that appeared in the fine print of Microsoft’s quarterly report—not in the gaming section, but in a part devoted to headcount costs—that made me do a double-take.
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