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Xbox: "Price Increases Are Never Fun For Anybody"
(www.gamespot.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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I remember when GamePass was first announced and everybody lauded Microsoft for being “pro-consumer” and outright cheered when they started buying up independent studios.
I remember being downvoted to oblivion for pointing out the very obvious 5 year plan for GP and the fact that it would go… exactly the way it’s currently going.
I don’t mind subscriptions for ongoing infrastructure as much. My problem is with using a subscription to replace ownership.
Platform infrastructure like PSN costs an inordinate amount of money. People owning games they paid for does not cost you any money.you already made your money back by selling them the ownership.
Yes, charging customers for a product that costs you money to maintain is an excuse, and a valid one. Sony and Nintendo were giving away an expensive service for free to the user. It was generous, and a way to reduce friction with onboarding new users.
They jumped on board because maintaining that infrastructure has become exponentially more expensive to maintain today than it was 20 years ago.
Because unlike paid user services, game ownership is not something that costs them any money. They aren’t recouping their costs for a service they provide, it’s just rentseeking.
You don’t buy… the fact that infrastructure that has to scale to millions of users globally, and the salaries of the many employees who maintain it cost money…? Buddy that shit costs literal millions a year.
Nintendos online user services were never free. They went from not having them, to having them and charging money.
And yes Steam is eating a metric shit ton of costs to give you those services for free. Because PCs are an open platform, they have to compete to keep you on their storefront. They eat all those costs because you don’t have to buy new hardware in order to switch.
These are very, very simple concepts you’re failing to grasp.
Youre failing to grasp the fact that Sony didn't need that infrastructure in the first place. Things worked great before they charged simply for you to play online.
Steam is a perfect example, they don't charge for anything except a #% fee or tax on the game when you buy it. As well as their market fees.
I understand your point, though I agree with OP, it was foolish to start paying PS in the first place when literally every other console had free multi-player. It's why I left XBOX and never got a PS. PC is just free after you pay your internet bill
What you’re both failing to grasp here is that the infrastructure existed when it was free. They always needed the infrastructure, and it always cost money. There is no “before”. They were just eating the costs as a marketing strategy to attract Xbox players who at the time had to pay for Xbox Live.
As console adoption increased, so did the cost of the infrastructure and the salaries of the many people it takes to maintain it, it just wasn’t feasible to provide those services for free when it cost so much money to maintain.
Every other console did not have free multiplayer. Xbox Live always cost money.
Company gets a cut of every game sold, gets exponentially more customers that use your infrastructure on a day to day basis, meanwhile the price of games stays the same for 20 years and game development cycles get longer while games and infrastructure gets more expensive to make.
I don’t. Valve is in a super sweet spot in the market and their near-monopoly on PC game sales and lean business model gives them a lot of breathing room that Companies like Sony don’t have. Some benefits Valve has:
Valve literally can’t charge you for their user services because you’re not stuck on their hardware. The very moment they do, they’ll lose all the user goodwill that has made them the default in their space and everybody can just pack up and move to another storefront or even just pirate their games. Valve has to eat those costs at the expense of everything else.”, they have no choice.
Tbf when Xbox first launched console multiplayer there was a monthly fee too.
That was anti-consumer from the get-go but it was also there from the start.
I never understood the praise at all. It's literally turning DRM into a business model.
Lol that's always been the business model
It's because it was pretty much the Netflix of video games. Pay a subscription and you get access to a collection of games.
When it was 5.99 it was a no brainer. I think I cancelled mine around 13.99, though not because of the price but because I always forgot it existed and it tied me to windows. Switched to Linux and cancelling was a part of that transition.
Yep. Same thing with netflix.
The average consumer is a moron, so their complacency is irrelevant in determining what's a good deal.
I feel like I responded to this exact comment on Reddit years ago saying the same. The thing people don't realize, is subscriptions give you zero control of ownership and it's always in the best interest of the corp to bait and switch.
At the time, I predicted you were probably right - but it would still be a good value for the time that the price stayed low.
Exactly, it was great at 11.99 IMO. As soon as I got the email saying a 50% increase, I cancelled. Surely they knew there would be cancellations but I'm not sure they knew there would be that many.
No doubt in my mind M$ employs obfuscated layers of (contracted) marketing to astroturf, including downvotes of your cautionary comments. The line between a fanboy and astroturfer is blurred.
Gaining subscribers/customers while bleeding money, then charging more money once your competitors are forced out of the market or investors want to cash out, is a basic strategy... I doubt Game Pass was ever profitable, it was all an illusion propped up by accounting tricks and obfuscated/discounted internal operating costs (where M$ can shift xbox costs to money-printing cloud services division).
No doubt after years of failed xbox, that Phil Spencer is just a corporate suit executing the vision of M$ as a whole (in which Games is just an inconvenient detail). Expect more of the same, bundling of other services, no actual good in-house games. Activision acquisition in part of this strategy to pump up Game Pass, since M$ internal studios have not produced anything noteworthy this generation. I expect the next xbox to have cheaper hardware to undercut ps6, but to have increased game pass incentives to make up for it. maybe a random bundle with netflix. you gotta think outside of the (x)box for whats coming next.