Beginning in 2023, Xbox Series X and Series S games like Redfall, Starfield, and Forza Motorsport will cost $69.99 at launch. According to a statement shared with fellow publication IGN, the new pricing “reflects the content, scale and technical complexity” of the affected Xbox Game Studio titles. Cost will likely vary across countries, but Xbox has yet to share any pricing details outside the US.
While the price tags themselves will experience a pretty sudden change, Microsoft’s decision to implement the $10 increase has been a slow build. 2K Games has raised the price of NBA 2K21 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X to $70 in 2020, prompting other developers and distributors to wonder if they could get away with similar increases in the near future. And they did: Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard and others hit the $70 mark earlier this year.
Forza Motorsport. (Photo: Xbox Game Studios)
Then Microsoft itself began to entertain the idea of a price hike. As our colleagues at IGN reported, Xbox chief Phil Spencer said last month that Microsoft would have to raise the price of its video games “at some point.” Spencer said the increase wouldn’t happen until this year’s holiday season, and he appears to have kept that promise.
Microsoft has confirmed that all titles included in the price increase will still hit Game Pass on release day, as usual. For some gamers, this makes the decision to use Xbox’s subscription streaming service even more obvious: Why pay an extra $10 upfront when Game Pass prices are stable? For others, however, Game Pass is just another monthly service to resist in an increasingly subscription-based world; $10 on a favorite title isn’t enough to start forgiving a monthly charge After all, we calculated following the 2K bump, games should technically cost more after accounting for inflation. At $70, should we consider ourselves lucky?
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