Oliver Cragg / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Phil Spencer told a crowd that he thinks prices for certain Xbox products will go up.
- No specific products were mentioned.
- The price hikes are expected to happen sometime after the holidays.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen companies raise prices on a variety of products due to supply chain and logistic issues. Now it looks like Xbox could be the next brand to implement a price hike.
While addressing a crowd at a Wall Street Journal event, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, said that he believes price hikes are in the future for Xbox products or services.
“I do think at some point we’ll have to raise the prices on certain things, but going into this holiday we thought it was important to maintain the prices,” Spencer said as reported by The Verge‘s Tom Warren. “We’ve held price on our console, we’ve held price on games… and our subscription. I don’t think we’ll be able to do that forever. I do think at some point we’ll have to raise some prices on certain things…”
In Spencer’s response, he doesn’t mention which products could see a price raise. It’s possible that he could be speaking generally or he could be specifically referring to the consoles, services like Xbox Cloud Gaming, or accessories individually.
If he’s talking about the Xbox Series X or the Xbox Series S, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen a console go up in price. PlayStation announced a price increase back in August for select regions including Canada, Europe, the UK, Japan, China, Mexico, and Australia. Meta also increased the price of the Quest 2 by $100 earlier this year.
When PlayStation announced its price increase, Microsoft continued selling its consoles for the original price. However, the company never said that it wouldn’t consider raising the price, telling GameSpot that it is “constantly evaluating” its business in terms of pricing.
Fortunately, it appears we won’t have to worry about price increases until at least after the holidays. As to why Microsoft would wait until after the holidays, it’s possible this is just a strategy by the company to keep prices competitive during the busiest shopping time of the year.
