Xbox Focus Is “Delivering Player Satisfaction & Value;” Evaluating $80-Priced Games
Earlier this year, Nintendo shocked the gaming world when it announced that some of its first-party games would cost $80, which is a $10 increase from the now-standard $70 price tag for current-gen games.
This alarmed gamers, as it might cause a shift in how publishers priced their titles. After Nintendo’s announcement, it didn’t take long for Microsoft to follow suit — or at least try to –with Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds 2.
Long story short: Microsoft dialed back its original plans of pricing The Outer Worlds 2 after fan backlash, and it’s now available at a regular price of $70.
The question on everyone’s mind now is: when will we see $80 games from Microsoft? It seems the company is still mulling over it, and hasn’t decided yet.
Xbox Game Studios Boss Comments on $80 Price Tag for Games
Microsoft President of Game Content and Studios Matt Booty was recently asked about the $80 price tag thing in a recent interview, and while Booty wouldn’t outright confirm or deny that they are looking to hike the price of its first-party games, he did say that they are listening to the fans.
Booty says they are still evaluating the company’s approach to pricing in the future, and commented, “Our whole focus is on delivering player satisfaction and delivering player value. And we’re always going to be listening to what people want there.”
Continuing with the statement, Booty, added, “We’ve reacted in the last year and I think for us, the real focus is going to be — I’ll come back to the phrase meeting people where they are. I think there’s going to be less of a focus on what’s that top line price of a game, as people start to engage in different ways with games. From our point of view, monetization just happens in so many different ways right now. So we’re going to continue to listen to the feedback from fans. We’re going to continue, to balance that with needing to run the healthy business. But right now, on the content side, we don’t have any pricing updates.”
Perhaps Microsoft is looking at it on a game-by-game basis. If they can somehow shoehorn microtransactions and whatnot in the game, maybe that’ll be enough for the company to not increase the price for that particular title? We can’t really say what these execs are planning, to be honest.
Halo Campaign Evolved is the next major Xbox game confirmed to be multiplatform. Will we see that priced at $80? Probably not, given it is a remake and not a new game entirely, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Microsoft pulls the gun on it for one of its major new releases such as Gears of War: E-Day.
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How can people just lie to the face of millions of others on a daily basis. I frankly don’t care what price they release games at. Only a moron buys a game day one at full price.
So err, did you mean to include an image of dead and cancelled Perfect Dark and practically dead studio game Forza 8?
Are those 2 things examples of “delivering player satisfaction” that this pathological liar along with Slimy Phil is talking about?
Nobody will ever trust the scumbags at Xbox ever again proven by them losing to the Nex Playground and Switch 1 in Black Friday sales. Trust Xbox to somehow come in 5th place in a three man race lol.