Phil Spencer has finally exposed himself on the recent increase in Xbox prices which, for the moment, only affects the USA but what they will inevitably also involve other markets, including Italy. A choice that the CEO of Microsoft Gaming and the Xbox division he described as suffering, and that he tried to delay as much as possible so as not to harm the players. Unfortunately, however, Spencer came across a problem already highlighted by other publishers including Sony itself, namely the increase in development costs for Triple A.
“Price is a reflection of the content, scale and technical complexity of these titles,” a Microsoft spokesperson explained to IGN when the latter asked about the decision. Statement also shared by Phil Spencer himself during an interview granted to the Second Request podcast.
“Price is always something we are aware of, as well as the impact it has on our consumers, and there are multiple things we can price in our platform. Obviously there are the consoles, the price of the games, the subscriptions, and given our current economic priorities, something had to change to continue running this businesswith the increase in costs we’ve had,” Spencer commented on the podcast.
The Xbox CEO then reiterated that this trend did not start from Microsoft, but from other companies, in support of the fact that the Redmond giant has tried to postpone this choice as much as possible. “We’ve tried to delay it as long as possible, and we continue to appreciate that our subscription service hasn’t increased, and the Series S is the cheapest current-gen console on the market, and in running our business, we’ve decided to raise the price of retail games for our biggest titles,” he concluded, then adding how all this is necessary to preserve the quality of Xbox games.
Source: Apple Podcast
