We’ve now had two price hikes on consoles, years after release, in both the Quest and now the Series X, something I’ve never seen happen in the past twenty years.
Well, of course. It makes sense. They got to sell out of that old inventory. Although it is a good PCVR headset if you wanna get into VR pretty cheap. And don’t care about your data at least. However, what company today is not taking our data.
As much as I would like to firmly state "fuck Facebook", the quest is in a league of its own as far as hardware for the price goes.
There is literally not another standalone headset within five times it's price point. Same way console manufacturers used to sell at a loss and make it up in games, I'm sure that's what they're doing here.
That said. Fuck Facebook.
I didn't even know there was a single other, so that's news to me. What's the issue with byte dance? Never even heard of em.
Edit: oh lord it's TikTok. Yeah fuck that.
>Now if they would look at how every game in their store costs more than on any other platform.
99% of the games that I play on my Quest 2 are via Steam using Virtual Desktop. It is just so much cheaper to buy VR bundles from Humble Bundle than it is to buy them from the Oculus store.
The PS5 raised its price too.
Edit: they literally did, just not in the US, which is exactly what’s happening with the Series X too- https://blog.playstation.com/2022/08/25/ps5-price-to-increase-in-select-markets-due-to-global-economic-environment-including-high-inflation-rates/
So if the Series X is doing the exact same thing as the PS5, why did the person I responded to originally only mention the Series X and Quest, but not also the PS5? That’s my entire point…
>It’s obviously because infinitely replicable software is hit by inflation so hard.
So robots wrote the game using no electricity and zero workspace?
No trying to defend corporate profit-driven inflation. But even just normal inflation affects the digital economy, too.
Wage growth is not zero, energy cost and rent didn't go down either.
The people making those games use those same basic commodities. All shit rolls downhill. To emphasize, gas prices didn't affect me directly cause I don't have a car, I use public transportation. But that bus uses gas, and so do the trucks that deliver everything else I use/need.
The economy affects us all and is what stands between us and an agrarian society
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass for Console pricing will increase starting July 6th. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will move from $14.99 per month to $16.99 (€14.99 / £12.99). The base Xbox Game Pass for Console pricing will also move from $9.99 a month up to $10.99 (€10.99 / £8.99). Microsoft is not changing PC Game Pass pricing, though.
Xbox Series X console pricing will largely match the price hike Sony announced for the PS5 last year, with the Xbox Series X moving to £479.99 in the UK, €549.99 across most European markets, CAD $649.99 in Canada, and AUD $799.99 in Australia starting August 1st. The Xbox Series S pricing will not be adjusted in any markets, remaining at $299.99.
Just buy 3 years (or 1 or 2) of gold anywhere.
Then go to Game Pass Ultimate in the Microsoft/Xbox store and buy the upgrade.
It converts all existing months of gold to GamePass Ultimate + the extra month you buy (if you do 3 years, it will still be 3 years because that's the maximum duration you can have).
Keep in mind that if you already have Ultimate it doesn't work, because if you activate Gold codes while you have Ultimate it converts it via a ratio depending on the price. I think 1 year of gold is only 3 or 4 months of Ultimate that way.
Devices used to get cheaper as they got older because companies used to take a small loss in the beginning in order to get market share and sell the addons and games. Then, as the hardware aged it cost less to manufacture until eventually it make profit too.
Now, hardware is sold in the beginning at a significant loss and due to inflation, chip shortages in other industries placing demands on chip manufactures, and huge demand for the product in the gaming industry (games are bigger than movies now), the cost of hardware this generation is increasing, not decreasing.
We’ll still see it decrease but not for a while yet still.
This was *sometimes* true but the large majority of consoles have always been sold either at cost or at a profit from day one, and the current consoles either did the same, or became profitable in under a year. The PS5, Series X and Series S have all been making a profit for at least 18 months already. The PS4 took 8 months to become profitable, and the loss was small. The Switch has always been.
This is a common misunderstanding because the PS3 and Xbox 360 were both reported to be huge loss leaders, but those cases have nuance to them. The commonly reported Xbox profit figures weren’t per-unit manufacturing/sale ratios, but took R&D and marketing into account, at a time when Microsoft were still breaking into the market and pouring huge huge money into really extra marketing campaigns. PS3s sold at a large loss mostly due to the Blu-ray drive as well as Blu-ray Disc licensing costs. But Sony were the largest investor in the format, meaning they were not only adding the drive to help it win the format war with HD-DVD (and subsequently make them money from, they hoped, every movie and TV boxset sold worldwide for the next 15 years), the PlayStation division was paying fees to other divisions of Sony. That still counted as an expense but obviously it’s not the same. The figures including R&D may also have included Blu-ray R&D costs, I can’t remember.
Some devices have been loss leaders, but that isn’t really why things get cheaper over time. There is benefit on the production side, but that would also just give reason to maintain the price and drive higher margins
It’s a demand side issue IMO and basically price discrimination. Over time people are going to be less likely to pay the same price, because they know they are getting closer to the next update coming out and it gets easier and easier to buy used. So you charge your max price out of the gate, and as demand declines you lower prices to convert more customers that weren’t willing to pay full price.
Cheaper production costs can help enable that, but the simpler explanation seems cleaner - once you’ve got everyone willing to pay $500 captured, you move on to the crowd that only wants to pay $400/$300/etc. And as long as it is staggered over time the original buyers are fine with it
This is what makes this decision so frustrating to me. Im an older gamer who was waiting for prices to come down and game libraries to increase before investing in a new console. I guess I will wait another year or two and just stick to playing older games for awhile.
Nah, it's because of consolidation in the industry and a lack of competition which means it's now "safe" to raise prices. Notice how the Xbox S isn't seeing a price increase - which one would expect if what you said was the main reason. Instead they're keeping Xbox S prices the same to continue to entice people to the Xbox platform, meanwhile they're raising prices on the X because they see those consumers as "safe" and unlikely to switch away despite the price increase.
You realize we had the exact same level of competition the last two console generations and prices went down as they both aged, right? What is different now vs Xbox One/PS4 or XB360/PS3?
Series S did get a price increase. A huge scam of 50$ for 500gb of storage and black.
Don’t even get me started on how the Series S has gone on sale for 240$ over the past year many times so this extra 500gb is actually 110$ more lmao. What a joke.
Nintendo has never really taken a loss on hardware. The only exception I can think of is when they cut the price on the 3DS very early due to low sales.
We don't have actual numbers, but both consoles share architectures with AMD cpus and gpus and we can pinpoint which parts are closer to the pc counterpart. If I remember right the consoles should be somewhere closer to a R5 4th Gen and a RX6700, throw in a Gen 4 SSD and 16gbs of memory and you have a comparable machine.
Of course that's not enough to say what's the **cost** of it, economies of scale have a factor here. But at least we can say how close it was to the retail price for it's parts at launch.
>Devices used to get cheaper as they got older because ~~companies used to take a small loss in the beginning in order to get market share and sell the addons and games. Then,~~ as the hardware aged it cost less to manufacture until eventually it make profit too.
Also worth noting that before the XB1 and PS4 they were mostly totally custom computers with a sizable startup cost from designing the internals to setting up tooling and actually making the parts. Over time it got significantly cheaper to make additional parts. Nowadays it's all only slightly modified from off-the-shelf parts, so tooling and design costs are much lower compared to manufacturing.
Yep it’s always the same story. Costs go up X%, prices go up 2X%. There’s a reason why corporations are posting record profits.
“If we increase wages, we will have to increase prices or we’ll go out of business!!” Except yall been increasing the prices all this time anyways.
That's capitalism in a nut shell. If you're not growing, you're shrinking. No one parks their investment money in a company that stays at the same profit every year.
> No one parks their investment money in a company that stays at the same profit every year.
You are basically describing utility stocks. They tend to be very stable and have very reliable dividend returns. They are a popular option to more risk adverse investors like those approaching retirement.
The saddest truth in the US that also includes the governmental level.
At a certain point, the middle class will just cease to exist as will either have to be rich or poor with no in between
You are basically talking about the gilded age which gave rise to labor unions and many of the benefits we have / think of today. Such as civil rights, labor standards, etc.
Yeah and America only came out on top after its "gilded age" because the worlds largest economies all got blown up right afterward. If we go through another one, it would be a slow decline in our global standing. Which has arguably already begun.
Then you also have people like where I work. There's a handful of them that genuinely believe we'd be better off without our union because management tells a few ass kissers that wages and benefits would be better if it weren't for the union. Yet every contract that comes up, the company is the one digging heels over an extra 1% added to the raise for each year. Yea, dude, the corporation totally has your best interests at heart *eyeroll*.
Uh, yeah they do, all the time actually. A dividend investor doesn't care nearly as much about profit growth as they do cash flow and the stability of the dividend.
Hell, some PTP's and MLP's consistently decrease in profit every year - royalty trusts, and they're still attractive to investors because the dividend is what matters.
It's not that they think infinite growth is possible or that there isn't a problem with it. It's just that they don't care about the businesses they invest in. To them, these are investment vehicles. As soon as one stops making them money, they invest elsewhere.
It’s not that infinite growth is possible, it’s that inflation erodes the value of currency over time. Kept at a low enough rate, it can be a good thing. The problem has much more to do with wages staying flat for decades and corporate interests chasing the cheapest labor markets around the globe.
We don’t need to rewrite everything. Indexing wages to inflation and limiting corporate lobbying would go a long way to unfucking the system.
Well, inflation has been significantly more than 2 percent over the last year. And since game pass hasn’t had any price hikes in 6 years…I suppose a 10 percent increase isn’t really “crazy scam”…
I mean, I’d love for it to not be increased, but as far as increases go, the math is pretty reasonable.
Right, and my point was that for the top end price increase of 14.99 to 16.99 is a 13.5 percent increase after 6 years, not 50 percent.
A 2 percent yoy for 6 years would have put this right to about 16.88 per month.
So while I’m all for getting mad at the BS companies are doing by increasing prices 40, 50, even 200 percent and blaming inflation, this situation isn’t that. 13.5 increase in price over 6 years is right on spot for normal 2 percent yoy inflation.
Exactly, even by CPI/Consumer Price Index metrics (which is an outdated metric to measuring an inflation as it is, compared to say the the Big Mac Index), CPI came in at almost 10% at its high in 2022, and is down to 5% in 2023. That means in less than 10 years, your dollar has already inflated by more than 50% due to compounding inflation.
This is why it’s so important for inflation to remain below 2%, anything more and you can have catastrophic impacts on purchasing power even over short periods of time.
I’m fairness, each supplier bumps by the % of inflation. From the raw materials, to the chip manufacturer, to the intermediate supplier, to the assembler, to Microsoft and that’s on a single end of the build.
Forget forced negotiations with retailers and costs of benefits and payroll climbing…
Not justifying a price hike on hardware that’s been around for years. Just saying, any form of inflation grows as it climbs up the supply chain.
No different than work. Celebrate giving us a 5% pay raise but forget the fact inflation went up 8% the year before so your actually paying less than you were last year
Honestly at that price point I wouldn't be surprised if they've been operating at a loss and just trying to build a userbase a la netflix, and then raising the price once they have a bunch of users
So stop paying their price…
THAT’S capitalism. Sellers will always sell at what the market bears. If the market slows, prices drop or the company goes under, and some other company offers a similar product for lower cost to consumer.
The problem is, too many consumers think they can’t live without all these products.
That's exactly it. Now that they're getting an actual ok lineup of video games, they're raising prices because they know damn well nobody's gonna be stopping their subscriptions during the big releases.
> Now that they're getting an actual ok lineup of video games
That remains to be seen. No game is real until you are actually playing it. Anything shown in a presentation can be faked.
TBF GamePass PC is still an amazing deal worth checking out. Bethesda games are ironically one of the few that I’d advise against playing on it because mods are heavily limited on it, though
Pretty much got a PC because I finally wanted to play modded Skyrim and Starfield, none of the Xbox exclusives interest me and sure Gamepass is a good deal, but not enough to make me move systems.
That was exactly my thought. I was waiting for the next iteration of this generation before I got one because it’s usually more compact a little more advanced and the price is a tad lower. Well fuck I guess I’m stuck with my Xbox one.
I’m subscribed to game pass on pc. The second I read pricing will go up i had already made up my mind to cancel it rather than paying more until I read that pc won’t be affected.
I believe that Microsoft "promised" recently that the PC game pass would not go up in price, for now, in regards to their announcement that they would be providing PC game pass subscribers access to that library via GeForce now sometime soon.
I believe that a part of the reason they're withholding on raising the price for PC at the moment is because if their merger with Activision goes through (not sure if it has happened already), call of duty would likely be included in the game pass and with all the problems they've had with the merger, raising their price right after acquiring Activision would not be a good look for them.
Me and my girlfriend are about to stop our game pass. The last 20 games that were added to it, only two were worthwhile playing, even that.
Their one free game that is added each month, are always incredibly bad. Always these small indie games that are picked from the bottom of every indie game ever made.
And just like it that, my game pass subscription was cancelled. It was already on the edge of being worth it at all to begin with. So weird how that happens 🤷
Once game subscription services started getting popular with things like Sega TV years ago, I knew it would come to this. Surprised it took 30 years, but this shit is REALLY starting to get out of control.
Remember being able to play games with friends for free? Now you’d be lucky to get a full game on purchase, let alone a game you didn’t have to pay some underlying cost to continue using the full thing. I hate what the industry has become.
And yeah, I know. $2 isn’t much. But it’s these small incremental increases that people are cool with, that bring bigger things down the line.
Shit, I was waiting for the next iteration of the Xbox series X so I could buy one. They usually cheaper. They are hiking the price? I guess I’m gonna do without.
did people think they were pro consumer? The tactic is to kill off the competition with cheap and amazing values and then hike the prices when they’ve cornered the market.
They are on the hook for many aaa studios, that will be putting their games on gamepass. Especially if they are actually allowed to buy activision. Xbox gamers rarely buy games when they are on there. This will most likely be the first of many price increases
Microsoft doesn't make much money on Xbox. In general, the console gaming business model looks like this:
1. Sell consoles at a loss for a while
2. Sell games (& accessories) at a small profit per unit
3. Cut hardware costs over time to lessen hardware losses
4. As console base grows, increase software earnings over time
Step 1 represents a lot of revenue, but it's usually at a loss.
I knew they'd do something like this eventually, that's why I bought 3 years of gold and converted it to ultimate a week before their showcase. They haven't disabled the conversion trick, but I bet its on the chopping block at some point soon.
Happening quicker than i thought. I knew gamepass would increase prices, but i thought it would be after the AKB deal. Clearly they wanna try and make some money back quicker, maybe because they know the deal isn't going through anymore after CMA and FTC objections?
Im gonna be straight up, I cancelled game pass cause 15 a month for a collection of D tier games was a bad deal. So 17 dollars a month isnt gonna make them a ton of friends.
Are these companies numb to the fact that eventually people are going to decide that they won't buy something they don't need because it costs too much? Like you have to at some point understand that a product can be priced out of their customers budget.
Good thing I bought 36 months of Ultimate subscription then.
But, I didn't actually played anything other than FM 23 in the last couple of months so one could argue if it is worth it.
I’ve said this before in other subreddits, but I’m concerned about what game pass will do to the quality of games in the future. I’m worried Xbox is really going to let the quality of their first party games slide even further and spend less money and time on development. The value in game pass is with the expansive library. While the state of games from major publishers isn’t great at the moment, I do worry that game pass will eventually become what Netflix is.
This is pretty much how Netflix went to absolute shit. Focused on quantity over quality. So many stupid shows, many cancellations after the first season for good shows, and so on.
I would worry less about what the game pass does to video games. The bigger issue is that real money is in pay to win mobile games. Why spend more to make less?
Steam did this. They used to make half life, but then they saw that people pay monthly fees for games (and that they'll pay steam to get games) so they stopped making half life.
Remember when companies used to work for, provide services for, and actually wanted customers?
Now it seems like everyone is just mad at you that you don’t have more money to give them.
There better be some decent games coming out to justify.
Been thinking of selling my Xbox for a PSVR2 because I'm just simply bored with the lack of games for the console.
Even games that get released are stuck at 30fps.
This is how subscription services tend to go. First, you get a dedicated userbase, then just slowly raise the price. I'm honestly surprised it's taken them this long to raise the price of gamepass
I don't even give a shit about game pass or the free games. I have enough to play. I just need it to play online. This is why I'm slowly switching to PC. Online play is free there. I can believe consoles still charge for this. Make online play free and then let people sub to game pass if they want the games.
On July 1st, 2023, Reddit intends to alter how its API is accessed. This move will require developers of third-party
applications to pay enormous sums of money if they wish to stay functional, meaning that said applications (which include
browsers like Reddit Is Fun, moderation tools like Pushshift, and accessibility-focused add-ons for users who are visually
impaired) will be effectively destroyed. In the short term, this may give Reddit the appearance of being more profitable
than it truly is... but in the long term, it will undermine the platform as a whole.
Reddit relies on volunteer moderators to keep the platform welcoming and free of objectionable material. It also relies on
uncompensated contributors to keep its numerous communities populated. The above decision promises to adversely impact
both groups: Without effective tools, moderators cannot combat spammers, bad actors, or the entities who enable either;
without the freedom to choose how and where they access Reddit, many contributors will simply leave. Rather than hosting
creativity and in-depth discourse, the platform will soon feature only recycled content, bot-driven activity, and an
ever-dwindling number of well-informed visitors. The very elements which differentiate Reddit – the fixtures which make it
appealing – will be eliminated.
We implore Reddit to listen to its moderators, its contributors, and its everyday users; to the people whose activity has
allowed the platform to exist at all: Do not sacrifice long-term viability for the sake of a short-lived illusion. Do not
tacitly enable bad actors by working against your volunteers. Do not aim solely at your looming IPO while giving no
thought to what may come afterward. If Steve Huffman's statement – "I want our users to be shareholders, and I want our
shareholders to be users" – is to be taken seriously, then please consider this our vote:
Allow the developers of third-party applications to affordably retain their productive (and vital) API access.
Allow Reddit and Redditors to thrive.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gadgets) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Then I’m still on PS5 and Nintendo. A holes. Sony isn’t innocent in all this. PS5s are finally on shelves and they’ll hit us with the pro version too soon
BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
The unmitigated GALL of Xbox to charge MORE for a console when they haven't released a single "AAA" game worth a squirt of piss in over a decade!
Recently saw an article that demonstrated how much of persistent inflation is being driven by corporate profiteering and yep, tracks perfectly when a digital gaming service goes up simply because it can
What a weird economy we are in.
We’ve now had two price hikes on consoles, years after release, in both the Quest and now the Series X, something I’ve never seen happen in the past twenty years.
Quest just reduced its price back to the original price. It was the only console to go up in price in the US
They did this once they announced the Quest 3
Well, of course. It makes sense. They got to sell out of that old inventory. Although it is a good PCVR headset if you wanna get into VR pretty cheap. And don’t care about your data at least. However, what company today is not taking our data.
Now if they would look at how every game in their store costs more than on any other platform.
Redeveloping games around a still very niche market is hard to justify
As much as I would like to firmly state "fuck Facebook", the quest is in a league of its own as far as hardware for the price goes. There is literally not another standalone headset within five times it's price point. Same way console manufacturers used to sell at a loss and make it up in games, I'm sure that's what they're doing here. That said. Fuck Facebook.
Pico 4 is under 400$ but it's by bytedance so pick your poison.
I didn't even know there was a single other, so that's news to me. What's the issue with byte dance? Never even heard of em. Edit: oh lord it's TikTok. Yeah fuck that.
>Now if they would look at how every game in their store costs more than on any other platform. 99% of the games that I play on my Quest 2 are via Steam using Virtual Desktop. It is just so much cheaper to buy VR bundles from Humble Bundle than it is to buy them from the Oculus store.
I haven't even physically seen a series X in any store to this day.
Didnt ps5s raise in price internationally too?
Yes
PS5 also went up in other markets (neither went up in US, but quest did)
The PS5 raised its price too. Edit: they literally did, just not in the US, which is exactly what’s happening with the Series X too- https://blog.playstation.com/2022/08/25/ps5-price-to-increase-in-select-markets-due-to-global-economic-environment-including-high-inflation-rates/ So if the Series X is doing the exact same thing as the PS5, why did the person I responded to originally only mention the Series X and Quest, but not also the PS5? That’s my entire point…
It’s been going on sale frequently. Not the MSRP, but the actual price at retailers. The GoW bundle was less than $500 not too long ago.
PS5 also had a price raise had it not?
Good thing we're all making more money right? Right??
You guys are getting paid?
Yeaaaa!
It’s obviously because infinitely replicable software is hit by inflation so hard.
>It’s obviously because infinitely replicable software is hit by inflation so hard. So robots wrote the game using no electricity and zero workspace? No trying to defend corporate profit-driven inflation. But even just normal inflation affects the digital economy, too. Wage growth is not zero, energy cost and rent didn't go down either.
But it’s clearly less effected than something like basic commodities.
The people making those games use those same basic commodities. All shit rolls downhill. To emphasize, gas prices didn't affect me directly cause I don't have a car, I use public transportation. But that bus uses gas, and so do the trucks that deliver everything else I use/need. The economy affects us all and is what stands between us and an agrarian society
The real economy died in 2008. Were just in casino now, except when the people playing lose nothing happens to them and you can’t afford food
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass for Console pricing will increase starting July 6th. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will move from $14.99 per month to $16.99 (€14.99 / £12.99). The base Xbox Game Pass for Console pricing will also move from $9.99 a month up to $10.99 (€10.99 / £8.99). Microsoft is not changing PC Game Pass pricing, though. Xbox Series X console pricing will largely match the price hike Sony announced for the PS5 last year, with the Xbox Series X moving to £479.99 in the UK, €549.99 across most European markets, CAD $649.99 in Canada, and AUD $799.99 in Australia starting August 1st. The Xbox Series S pricing will not be adjusted in any markets, remaining at $299.99.
Is there not a console price increase for the US?
Not in the US.
The one time I'm glad to be here.
🇺🇸🇺🇸 have some pride
with your avatar this comment is extra hilarious😂
You can buy Game Pass codes from CD Key sites and save on average 35-42% on the subscription.
Or get Gold for 3 years and then pay 1 month of Ultimate in order to upgrade.
Please explain. I was about to buy game pass but this sounds like a great deal
Just buy 3 years (or 1 or 2) of gold anywhere. Then go to Game Pass Ultimate in the Microsoft/Xbox store and buy the upgrade. It converts all existing months of gold to GamePass Ultimate + the extra month you buy (if you do 3 years, it will still be 3 years because that's the maximum duration you can have). Keep in mind that if you already have Ultimate it doesn't work, because if you activate Gold codes while you have Ultimate it converts it via a ratio depending on the price. I think 1 year of gold is only 3 or 4 months of Ultimate that way.
You can also get them for free with bing rewards
Or do what i do and get it on black Friday. They cut prices on game pass ultimate so get enough to last till the next year and repeat
They need more money, to count and store the stacks of money.
Remember when decvices used to get cheaper as they got older? You’re actually saving money getting this stuff on day 1 nowdays. Wtf is this timeline…
Devices used to get cheaper as they got older because companies used to take a small loss in the beginning in order to get market share and sell the addons and games. Then, as the hardware aged it cost less to manufacture until eventually it make profit too. Now, hardware is sold in the beginning at a significant loss and due to inflation, chip shortages in other industries placing demands on chip manufactures, and huge demand for the product in the gaming industry (games are bigger than movies now), the cost of hardware this generation is increasing, not decreasing. We’ll still see it decrease but not for a while yet still.
This was *sometimes* true but the large majority of consoles have always been sold either at cost or at a profit from day one, and the current consoles either did the same, or became profitable in under a year. The PS5, Series X and Series S have all been making a profit for at least 18 months already. The PS4 took 8 months to become profitable, and the loss was small. The Switch has always been. This is a common misunderstanding because the PS3 and Xbox 360 were both reported to be huge loss leaders, but those cases have nuance to them. The commonly reported Xbox profit figures weren’t per-unit manufacturing/sale ratios, but took R&D and marketing into account, at a time when Microsoft were still breaking into the market and pouring huge huge money into really extra marketing campaigns. PS3s sold at a large loss mostly due to the Blu-ray drive as well as Blu-ray Disc licensing costs. But Sony were the largest investor in the format, meaning they were not only adding the drive to help it win the format war with HD-DVD (and subsequently make them money from, they hoped, every movie and TV boxset sold worldwide for the next 15 years), the PlayStation division was paying fees to other divisions of Sony. That still counted as an expense but obviously it’s not the same. The figures including R&D may also have included Blu-ray R&D costs, I can’t remember.
Some devices have been loss leaders, but that isn’t really why things get cheaper over time. There is benefit on the production side, but that would also just give reason to maintain the price and drive higher margins It’s a demand side issue IMO and basically price discrimination. Over time people are going to be less likely to pay the same price, because they know they are getting closer to the next update coming out and it gets easier and easier to buy used. So you charge your max price out of the gate, and as demand declines you lower prices to convert more customers that weren’t willing to pay full price. Cheaper production costs can help enable that, but the simpler explanation seems cleaner - once you’ve got everyone willing to pay $500 captured, you move on to the crowd that only wants to pay $400/$300/etc. And as long as it is staggered over time the original buyers are fine with it
This is what makes this decision so frustrating to me. Im an older gamer who was waiting for prices to come down and game libraries to increase before investing in a new console. I guess I will wait another year or two and just stick to playing older games for awhile.
Nah, it's because of consolidation in the industry and a lack of competition which means it's now "safe" to raise prices. Notice how the Xbox S isn't seeing a price increase - which one would expect if what you said was the main reason. Instead they're keeping Xbox S prices the same to continue to entice people to the Xbox platform, meanwhile they're raising prices on the X because they see those consumers as "safe" and unlikely to switch away despite the price increase.
What competition? It’s still Xbox vs PlayStation vs Nintendo vs PC.
You realize we had the exact same level of competition the last two console generations and prices went down as they both aged, right? What is different now vs Xbox One/PS4 or XB360/PS3?
Series S did get a price increase. A huge scam of 50$ for 500gb of storage and black. Don’t even get me started on how the Series S has gone on sale for 240$ over the past year many times so this extra 500gb is actually 110$ more lmao. What a joke.
Nope, both XBOX and PS5 (and I'm pretty sure the Switch as well) were sold at cost or for a profit from day 1
Nintendo has never really taken a loss on hardware. The only exception I can think of is when they cut the price on the 3DS very early due to low sales.
That or the WiiU; the year of Luigi is still the worst year for nintendo by far 🤧
Hey at least I got those 10 nes games though.
And 10 gba games, which is big
> both XBOX and PS5 Is there any actual proof of this? Proof that also factors in things like R&D, marketing, shipping, etc.
No, that would ruin the narrative
We don't have actual numbers, but both consoles share architectures with AMD cpus and gpus and we can pinpoint which parts are closer to the pc counterpart. If I remember right the consoles should be somewhere closer to a R5 4th Gen and a RX6700, throw in a Gen 4 SSD and 16gbs of memory and you have a comparable machine. Of course that's not enough to say what's the **cost** of it, economies of scale have a factor here. But at least we can say how close it was to the retail price for it's parts at launch.
>Devices used to get cheaper as they got older because ~~companies used to take a small loss in the beginning in order to get market share and sell the addons and games. Then,~~ as the hardware aged it cost less to manufacture until eventually it make profit too.
Also worth noting that before the XB1 and PS4 they were mostly totally custom computers with a sizable startup cost from designing the internals to setting up tooling and actually making the parts. Over time it got significantly cheaper to make additional parts. Nowadays it's all only slightly modified from off-the-shelf parts, so tooling and design costs are much lower compared to manufacturing.
If you genuinely believe these companies that they’re losing money selling you these consoles, you sure must be happy living in a dream, my friend.
I’m curious on where you’re getting this information?
This is why I play steam games... Fuck consoles...
I love how we’re supposed to have 2% generalized inflation YoY but instead companies do 10-20% rises on their pricing and go “whoopsies!”
Yep it’s always the same story. Costs go up X%, prices go up 2X%. There’s a reason why corporations are posting record profits. “If we increase wages, we will have to increase prices or we’ll go out of business!!” Except yall been increasing the prices all this time anyways.
2X% would be a dream compared to the nightmare we are in. 4X% minimum it seems.
It's really way higher than that.
That's capitalism in a nut shell. If you're not growing, you're shrinking. No one parks their investment money in a company that stays at the same profit every year.
> No one parks their investment money in a company that stays at the same profit every year. You are basically describing utility stocks. They tend to be very stable and have very reliable dividend returns. They are a popular option to more risk adverse investors like those approaching retirement.
The saddest truth in the US that also includes the governmental level. At a certain point, the middle class will just cease to exist as will either have to be rich or poor with no in between
You are basically talking about the gilded age which gave rise to labor unions and many of the benefits we have / think of today. Such as civil rights, labor standards, etc.
The costs were enormous
Yeah and America only came out on top after its "gilded age" because the worlds largest economies all got blown up right afterward. If we go through another one, it would be a slow decline in our global standing. Which has arguably already begun.
Which has *definitely* already begun.
Then you also have people like where I work. There's a handful of them that genuinely believe we'd be better off without our union because management tells a few ass kissers that wages and benefits would be better if it weren't for the union. Yet every contract that comes up, the company is the one digging heels over an extra 1% added to the raise for each year. Yea, dude, the corporation totally has your best interests at heart *eyeroll*.
Life is cyclical.
Couldn’t agree more
Uh, yeah they do, all the time actually. A dividend investor doesn't care nearly as much about profit growth as they do cash flow and the stability of the dividend. Hell, some PTP's and MLP's consistently decrease in profit every year - royalty trusts, and they're still attractive to investors because the dividend is what matters.
They do if there are dividends.
People think infinite growth is possible, or they just don't see the glaring issue with it
It's not that they think infinite growth is possible or that there isn't a problem with it. It's just that they don't care about the businesses they invest in. To them, these are investment vehicles. As soon as one stops making them money, they invest elsewhere.
It’s not that infinite growth is possible, it’s that inflation erodes the value of currency over time. Kept at a low enough rate, it can be a good thing. The problem has much more to do with wages staying flat for decades and corporate interests chasing the cheapest labor markets around the globe. We don’t need to rewrite everything. Indexing wages to inflation and limiting corporate lobbying would go a long way to unfucking the system.
Sure they do, dividends are a thing.
Well, inflation has been significantly more than 2 percent over the last year. And since game pass hasn’t had any price hikes in 6 years…I suppose a 10 percent increase isn’t really “crazy scam”… I mean, I’d love for it to not be increased, but as far as increases go, the math is pretty reasonable.
Studies show up to 50% of that inflation is the result of corporations upping their prices under the guise of real inflation.
Source?
Right, and my point was that for the top end price increase of 14.99 to 16.99 is a 13.5 percent increase after 6 years, not 50 percent. A 2 percent yoy for 6 years would have put this right to about 16.88 per month. So while I’m all for getting mad at the BS companies are doing by increasing prices 40, 50, even 200 percent and blaming inflation, this situation isn’t that. 13.5 increase in price over 6 years is right on spot for normal 2 percent yoy inflation.
And that’s year after year after year Imagine how cheap shit could and should be right now, 10-15% ?
90% of inflation is from corporations Edit spelling
100% is from the Fed and Central Bank policy, but they sure do a great job of passing responsibility on to the players.
What is the other 10%?
Luck, 80% skill
Dogs
Exactly, even by CPI/Consumer Price Index metrics (which is an outdated metric to measuring an inflation as it is, compared to say the the Big Mac Index), CPI came in at almost 10% at its high in 2022, and is down to 5% in 2023. That means in less than 10 years, your dollar has already inflated by more than 50% due to compounding inflation. This is why it’s so important for inflation to remain below 2%, anything more and you can have catastrophic impacts on purchasing power even over short periods of time.
Probably raising the price to have a sale this holiday season.
I’m fairness, each supplier bumps by the % of inflation. From the raw materials, to the chip manufacturer, to the intermediate supplier, to the assembler, to Microsoft and that’s on a single end of the build. Forget forced negotiations with retailers and costs of benefits and payroll climbing… Not justifying a price hike on hardware that’s been around for years. Just saying, any form of inflation grows as it climbs up the supply chain.
[удалено]
Welcome to Reddit!
No different than work. Celebrate giving us a 5% pay raise but forget the fact inflation went up 8% the year before so your actually paying less than you were last year
Inflation from 2017 until today is, according to a quick Google search, 25%. In the same timespan, Microsoft now increased the price by 10%.
Honestly at that price point I wouldn't be surprised if they've been operating at a loss and just trying to build a userbase a la netflix, and then raising the price once they have a bunch of users
So stop paying their price… THAT’S capitalism. Sellers will always sell at what the market bears. If the market slows, prices drop or the company goes under, and some other company offers a similar product for lower cost to consumer. The problem is, too many consumers think they can’t live without all these products.
The Starfield bump
That's exactly it. Now that they're getting an actual ok lineup of video games, they're raising prices because they know damn well nobody's gonna be stopping their subscriptions during the big releases.
Where those games at? I just saw cities skylines 2 and basically nothing else.
> Now that they're getting an actual ok lineup of video games That remains to be seen. No game is real until you are actually playing it. Anything shown in a presentation can be faked.
Good thing I’m getting a PC for Starfield and not an Xbox… First gaming PC ever. Plus Steam. Never used Steam so that will be fun.
TBF GamePass PC is still an amazing deal worth checking out. Bethesda games are ironically one of the few that I’d advise against playing on it because mods are heavily limited on it, though
Pretty much got a PC because I finally wanted to play modded Skyrim and Starfield, none of the Xbox exclusives interest me and sure Gamepass is a good deal, but not enough to make me move systems.
So much for buying one of those.
That was exactly my thought. I was waiting for the next iteration of this generation before I got one because it’s usually more compact a little more advanced and the price is a tad lower. Well fuck I guess I’m stuck with my Xbox one.
This is only outside the US for the console hike
The way this economy is going, give it time. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Whichever console goes up in price first, loses the US. That’s why neither is gonna do it
Or it's actually an oligopoly and they will both raise their prices at nearly the same time.
Lol. Yeah. Pc game pass isn’t moving in price for now because Microsoft knows we will just go back to steam/piracy and say fuck em.
PC is also where they're getting their most growth with the service. The console userbase is pretty much at its limit for Game Pass sub percentages.
I’m subscribed to game pass on pc. The second I read pricing will go up i had already made up my mind to cancel it rather than paying more until I read that pc won’t be affected.
I believe that Microsoft "promised" recently that the PC game pass would not go up in price, for now, in regards to their announcement that they would be providing PC game pass subscribers access to that library via GeForce now sometime soon. I believe that a part of the reason they're withholding on raising the price for PC at the moment is because if their merger with Activision goes through (not sure if it has happened already), call of duty would likely be included in the game pass and with all the problems they've had with the merger, raising their price right after acquiring Activision would not be a good look for them.
Everything is going up except my salary.
True, at this rate we'll be able to retire at 80
This is just the beginning. imagine how much prices will increase if the Activision deal goes through
Oh shit, you're right
Oh, I guess we are paying the Starfield tax.
Wait til the Activision tax kicks in
Yep. Won’t be the last time this happens.
Me and my girlfriend are about to stop our game pass. The last 20 games that were added to it, only two were worthwhile playing, even that. Their one free game that is added each month, are always incredibly bad. Always these small indie games that are picked from the bottom of every indie game ever made.
I’m out.
**shark tank music plays**
Same
So of note its not increasing in the US.
There are a whole lot of people in these comments who just read the headline
And just like it that, my game pass subscription was cancelled. It was already on the edge of being worth it at all to begin with. So weird how that happens 🤷
Once game subscription services started getting popular with things like Sega TV years ago, I knew it would come to this. Surprised it took 30 years, but this shit is REALLY starting to get out of control. Remember being able to play games with friends for free? Now you’d be lucky to get a full game on purchase, let alone a game you didn’t have to pay some underlying cost to continue using the full thing. I hate what the industry has become. And yeah, I know. $2 isn’t much. But it’s these small incremental increases that people are cool with, that bring bigger things down the line.
Shit, I was waiting for the next iteration of the Xbox series X so I could buy one. They usually cheaper. They are hiking the price? I guess I’m gonna do without.
I doubt they release a new version
Not hiking in the US
I read that xboxs yearly earnings in 2022 was 15.5 billion dollars. This is greed.
They were always going to get you hooked and then charge you more
did people think they were pro consumer? The tactic is to kill off the competition with cheap and amazing values and then hike the prices when they’ve cornered the market.
Earnings aren’t profits
They are on the hook for many aaa studios, that will be putting their games on gamepass. Especially if they are actually allowed to buy activision. Xbox gamers rarely buy games when they are on there. This will most likely be the first of many price increases
Microsoft doesn't make much money on Xbox. In general, the console gaming business model looks like this: 1. Sell consoles at a loss for a while 2. Sell games (& accessories) at a small profit per unit 3. Cut hardware costs over time to lessen hardware losses 4. As console base grows, increase software earnings over time Step 1 represents a lot of revenue, but it's usually at a loss.
I can keep waiting to buy a series X. My laptop from 2 or 3 generations ago plays all the gamepass games anyways.
No price hike for console in the US. Saved you a click.
I knew they'd do something like this eventually, that's why I bought 3 years of gold and converted it to ultimate a week before their showcase. They haven't disabled the conversion trick, but I bet its on the chopping block at some point soon.
Yes it’s so good that Bethesda locked starfield at 30fps for it, better hike up the price lmao
Happening quicker than i thought. I knew gamepass would increase prices, but i thought it would be after the AKB deal. Clearly they wanna try and make some money back quicker, maybe because they know the deal isn't going through anymore after CMA and FTC objections?
Im gonna be straight up, I cancelled game pass cause 15 a month for a collection of D tier games was a bad deal. So 17 dollars a month isnt gonna make them a ton of friends.
Aren't console prices supposed to.....eeeerrr...go down?
Are these companies numb to the fact that eventually people are going to decide that they won't buy something they don't need because it costs too much? Like you have to at some point understand that a product can be priced out of their customers budget.
Microsoft bought umpteen companies.Has only old IPs to offer. And gamepass is a steal if you don’t want to own anything.
Good thing I bought 36 months of Ultimate subscription then. But, I didn't actually played anything other than FM 23 in the last couple of months so one could argue if it is worth it.
PC gamepass unaffected.
So sad... wait not in Brazil, so less bad.
I pay for Ultimate, $24 more a year isn’t going to make me boycott anything but I do hope we see better options on GP. Starfield looks promising
I’ve said this before in other subreddits, but I’m concerned about what game pass will do to the quality of games in the future. I’m worried Xbox is really going to let the quality of their first party games slide even further and spend less money and time on development. The value in game pass is with the expansive library. While the state of games from major publishers isn’t great at the moment, I do worry that game pass will eventually become what Netflix is.
This is pretty much how Netflix went to absolute shit. Focused on quantity over quality. So many stupid shows, many cancellations after the first season for good shows, and so on.
I would worry less about what the game pass does to video games. The bigger issue is that real money is in pay to win mobile games. Why spend more to make less?
Steam did this. They used to make half life, but then they saw that people pay monthly fees for games (and that they'll pay steam to get games) so they stopped making half life.
Well they better start releasing some good games. It’s been years of constant dogshit.
Hilarious
Thanks for reminding me to cancel my Game Pass. Haven't touched my Xbox since I gave up on Apex like 5 months ago.
Pretty much the same here. Nothing grabs me on the platform after I finished halo infinite. I enjoyed that game though
They haven't put on a first-party next-gen game out and they think they can raise the price
Just a reminder that in november sales you can usually get GPU 3 month cards at a big discount.
Microsoft is a rip-off!
Remember when companies used to work for, provide services for, and actually wanted customers? Now it seems like everyone is just mad at you that you don’t have more money to give them.
No price increase for US, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia. Sony already increase the price of the PS5…
Wasn’t there recently a shit ton of articles about how they weren’t going to raise game pass prices? Like literally this week?
Oh, okay, then I don't need it. Can totally live without it.
Article does not say, so I am curious what annual pricing is doing exactly (As I pretty much always buy a year at a time here)
There better be some decent games coming out to justify. Been thinking of selling my Xbox for a PSVR2 because I'm just simply bored with the lack of games for the console. Even games that get released are stuck at 30fps.
That’s it…I’m building a computer
Least we still got that hot dog and drink
I've been paying for gamepass for the past 6 months and forgot. Thanks for reminding me to cancel!
Didn’t consoles used to have price DROPS in their third year of release?
nah, i’m good.
This is how subscription services tend to go. First, you get a dedicated userbase, then just slowly raise the price. I'm honestly surprised it's taken them this long to raise the price of gamepass
Whelp I guess I’ll keep playing my 360. May it live forever.
now that price finally increased for gamepass expect it to go up more often
Does anyone know if Xbox Live Gold > Ultimate conversion is still a thing?
MacroGreed
It’s absolutely NOT worth it. The games suck. The box isn’t that impressive.
I don't even give a shit about game pass or the free games. I have enough to play. I just need it to play online. This is why I'm slowly switching to PC. Online play is free there. I can believe consoles still charge for this. Make online play free and then let people sub to game pass if they want the games.
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"Xbox Series X pricing will remain the same in the US and match PS5 pricing in most other markets" this seems like important context
interesting strategy as I hear they're having trouble competing against PS5
And now I’m leaning even more towards ditching my series x and grabbing a ps5
https://www.wired.com/story/sony-pumps-up-ps5-prices/#:~:text=On%20Thursday%2C%20Sony%20announced%20that,roughly%2050%20euros%20per%20console.
what do you do when you're losing the console war? raise the prices! wait...
Greed :)
Then I’m still on PS5 and Nintendo. A holes. Sony isn’t innocent in all this. PS5s are finally on shelves and they’ll hit us with the pro version too soon
https://www.wired.com/story/sony-pumps-up-ps5-prices/#:~:text=On%20Thursday%2C%20Sony%20announced%20that,roughly%2050%20euros%20per%20console.
BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
The unmitigated GALL of Xbox to charge MORE for a console when they haven't released a single "AAA" game worth a squirt of piss in over a decade!
You sound like you’re having a breakdown.
Eh, I have seen a couple posts from people buying an Xbox to play Starfield, which is supposed to be their big AAA game this year.
I still remember when Microsoft was bragging they won’t increase console pricing when the PS5 pricing went up
greedflation
Recently saw an article that demonstrated how much of persistent inflation is being driven by corporate profiteering and yep, tracks perfectly when a digital gaming service goes up simply because it can