The Xbox boss hinted at a rise in the price of consoles, games and subscriptions

When Sony announced at the end of August that the price of the PlayStation 5 would immediately increase by 50 euros (1000 CZK) due to high inflation, Phil Spencer confirmed that the retail price of the new generation Xbox would remain the same. But now the head of Microsoft’s gaming division has hinted at price hikes for consoles, games and subscriptions.

It follows from Spencer’s words that this Christmas it’s important to keep the price lowbut they can’t do it forever. In other words, next year there could be an announcement from Microsoft informing about price increases not only for games, but also for Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass subscriptions, and for the consoles themselves, especially the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.

“We have kept the prices of our console, we have kept the prices of our games and subscriptions. I don’t think we can do this forever. I think at some point we will have to increase the prices of some products, but in the run-up to Christmas this year, we found it very important to keep the prices the same.” Spencer commented on the situation during the WSJ Tech Live.

Yesterday we told you about Valve’s proposed price increase for developers and publishers on Steam. As you can see, more and more companies are responding to the current unflattering situation.

Also, Phil Spencer revealed some behind the scenes information. Xbox Game Pass accounts for approximately 15% of Microsoft’s revenue from the Xbox content and services division.. Spencer doesn’t think he’ll get more out of it as revenues generally rise. However, the Xbox boss suggests that Subscriptions won’t dominate Microsoft’s gaming revenue. On the other hand, the PC industry is seeing incredible growth.

“We are seeing a slowdown on consoles, mainly because at some point we reached everyone on consoles. [hráče, pozn. redakce]who want to subscribe to the service,” Spencer explains by saying that PC Game Pass subscribers are up 159% year over year. and more than 20 million people streamed games through Xbox Cloud Gaming, up from 10 million at the start of the year.

We recently learned about the intention to create Xbox Mobile Game Store, which will compete with Google Play and the App Store. Xbox Cloud Gaming will be important to him so that gamers can play great games from Xbox on smartphones and tablets. It is also important that Microsoft can buy Activision Blizzard with Studio King. He has extensive experience in the mobile industry and has created very popular games including the Candy Crush series, Farm Heroes and Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!.