Last month when Nintendo announced it’s Switch 2 games would be increasing to $80, it seemed like they were going to be an outlier. At least for a few years until the next iterations of Xbox and Playstation came out. Today, however, Microsoft announced that Xbox hardware and games would be increasing. Their games will match Nintendo’s pricing at $80. They cited rising game costs and market conditions as the reason for the increase. They also announced a price increase for their consoles effective immediately.
Speculation seems to be that tariffs are at least part of the market conditions that they are referring to. Considering the uncertainty of the tariffs and how every few days things change, that doesn’t seem to be out of the realm of possibility. It’s pretty uncommon that game prices and especially console prices increase in the middle of their lifecycle.
Game Pass Gains More Value
With the price increase, it makes Xbox Game Pass even more valuable. $80 for one first party game or $20 a month for over 300 games, for a lot of people they’d choose the $20 a month. Xbox has put out 3 first party games in the last few weeks and they have more releasing later this year, with Doom the Dark Ages coming out in a few weeks. All these releases would cost a few hundred dollars more than a year of Game Pass would cost.
Will GTA Cost $100?
There’s been rumors that Grand Theft Auto 6 would cost $100 at launch. Last year this rumor seemed ridiculous, but with games now costing $80, that doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. With a title as big as GTA, they could easily charge $100 and still break records.
Will $80 make you subscribe to more subscription services or cut back on gaming? Let us know.
