In what seems like a move RIGHT after PS5’s were confirmed to have a price increase in most territories, Phil Spencer confirms Xbox will not receive a price increase.
In an interview with CNBC, CEO of Xbox Gaming, Phil Spencer doubled down on acquisition moves as well as confirming plans moving forward. Spencer’s aim to “make sure Xbox is at the forefront of innovation and competition” has been key in keeping the price where it is. The CNBC interview, as reposted by @asiasquawkbox can be seen below.
The interview went over many topics that have been circulating in the past weeks, such as the push forward for Xbox Gaming to acquire new licenses and make new deals due to the landscape being littered with them, the latest Tencent buying spree, culminating in Tencent and Sony purchasing massive FromSoftware percentages was mentioned as motivational fuel. Xbox has no plans to ‘press pause’ on their search for new licenses as well, mentioning their latest partnership with Kojima Productions, and newfound willingness to branch out.
Phil Spencer outlined their console pricing plans, as transcribed by resetera:
We’re always evaluating our business going forward. So I don’t think we can ever say on anything that we will never do something. But when we look at our consoles today, and you talked about it – Series X and Series S, we think value is incredibly important. We love the position of Series S in the market, which is our lower cost console. Over half of our new players that we’re finding are coming in through Series S.
And I can definitely say we have no plans today to raise price of our consoles. We think in a time when our customers are more economically challenged and uncertain than ever, we don’t think it’s the right move for us at this point to be raising prices on our console.
– Phil Spencer, TGS 2022, CNBC
It seems Xbox isn’t alone in this regard, as Nintendo has also revealed they have no plans to change the price of their hardware for the foreseeable future, in a statement made to Eurogamer back in August. CEO of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa said “While we cannot comment on pricing strategies, we currently do not have any plans to change the price of our hardware due to inflation or increased procurement costs in each country. We will determine our future pricing strategies through careful and continued deliberations,” in a move of solidarity between Nintendo and Microsoft to keep console pricing the same.
While PS5’s will cost more for consumers not located in the USA, Xbox and Switch consoles will keep their price points, according to Phil Spencer and Shuntaro Furukawa for the time.
