A few years ago, Microsoft offered some of the best deals in gaming. The spartan Xbox Series S was well-priced at $300 (and you could often find it even cheaper if you hunted for deals). A $15 monthly subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate offered a vast catalog of games new and old. But my, how things have changed in 2025.
The nearly five-year-old Xbox hardware lineup got not just one but two price bumps this year; the Series S with 512GB of storage now costs a whopping $400, while the Series X starts at $600 for a digital-only model or $650 with a disc drive — $150 and $100 than they retailed for just a few months ago. Adding insult to injury, Microsoft also jacked up the price of Game Pass Ultimate by 50 percent this week — it will soon cost $30 a month, up from $20. And that’s hardly the only price bump it has received recently — it was only $17 as recently as July of last year. It’s a positively wild move.
Sure, Microsoft isn’t alone in increasing console pricing — Nintendo is charging more for the ancient original Switch than ever before, and the Switch 2 is no bargain at $450. Sony also increased PS5 pricing this year, albeit to a less dramatic extent. It’s not a huge shock given the roller-coaster ride of uncertainty that is the US economy in 2025 (and for at least a few more years to come), but Microsoft’s approach feels egregious.
And that was before the Game Pass bump. It seems Microsoft is betting that increased revenue from die-hards will offset the inevitable losses from people who decide that the new price isn’t worth it. Subscriber inertia is definitely a real thing, and devoted Xbox owners who get a lot of use out of Game Pass may not bat an eye (or may forget to check their bank statements).
$30 for hundreds of games, as well as high-profile launch day availability for titles that would normally cost $70 or more each, is totally reasonable. By the same token, $30 or $40 for something like Apple Music would be more than fair when you consider how much purchasing a single album costs. (Not to mention fair compensation for all the artists involved in making music, or games, but that’s a story for another time.)
But in a desperate effort to get people signed up for music streaming, $10 a month became the industry standard. Sure, streaming services cost a few bucks more than that now, but they’ve thus far avoided the big price jumps we’re seeing in video and now game streaming. As the first big company to offer a subscription gaming catalog, Microsoft had a chance to set market rates — but to get as many people on board as possible, it seems like it aimed too low and is making up for it now.
And those who used to pay $15 or $18 or even $20 a month for Game Pass for years will likely struggle with this bump, no matter how devoted an Xbox gamer they are. A year of Game Pass now costs more than double the annual rate for a PlayStation Plus Platinum subscription. And while Sony still has no plans to bring high-profile, first-party studio games like Ghost of Yotei to its service on day one, the various PS Plus plans offer a ton of value without that. Especially for people who don’t need to play the hot new game the week it comes out.
For my part, I’ve been considering breaking up with Xbox for most of the year, and I think this will seal the deal. In a lot of ways, I was the exact target market for the Series S and Game Pass. There weren’t a ton of Xbox games I wanted to play, but there were enough I was curious about. So the combo of a reasonably-priced console and Game Pass was a great way to both try some new games and explore others I had missed.
Getting new players into the Xbox ecosystem feels like a massive challenge now with the prices we’re looking at. My year-one cost for an Xbox Series S and Game Pass was $480; it would be almost double now at $860. That is a positively brutal increase, and you can get far more for your money in the PlayStation ecosystem, to say nothing about Steam’s frequent (and often more generous) sales. And more and more former Xbox exclusives are coming to other consoles — like Forza Horizon 5, the game that got me to buy an Xbox in the first place. That’s yet another reason to not buy an Xbox, especially at these prices.
Sure, part of Microsoft’s strategy is that anything can be an Xbox, streaming games to your TV or set-top box. But you’ll need a really strong internet connection for that to be your only way to play games, and the kind of people who are going to shell out $30 for Game Pass are probably going to want the increased performance and fidelity that’ll come with a dedicated console. At the very least, though, game streaming is available on all Game Pass plans, so they’re making that part of the equation more accessible to more users.
Microsoft seems to have decided anything can be an Xbox without considering the people who already bought one. The new strategy appears to be shifting consumer costs away from hardware (which is usually a loss leader anyway) to its increasingly-expensive subscription service. That’s been a clear part of the Xbox plan for a while now, but people have come to expect a certain price point for things like Game Pass (regardless of whether or not that price is ethical). Now, Microsoft looks like it’s gouging Game Pass customers and leaves people who did buy into the Xbox ecosystem feeling taken advantage of.
The big bet is that fewer customers paying more will work out in the long run. I have no idea if that’s the right strategy — but I’m one gamer who won’t be sticking around to find out. I bet I’m not alone.
Source link
