After backing down from an $80 price point with The Outer Worlds 2, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty has said the company will continue to look at pricing.
Earlier this year, Nintendo crossed the threshold by announcing that Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World will be sold at $80 (albeit with a cheaper bundle option available). Xbox then followed suit, confirming a price hike on both consoles and games, with The Outer Worlds 2 being the publisher's first foray into the $80 price point.
However, following some backlash from fans, Microsoft quickly rolled back this decision, although another Xbox Game Pass price hike soon followed in its stead.
That said, the $80 ambition might not be gone for good. Speaking to Variety, Booty said, "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," in reference to rolling back the price after backlash.
However, Booty added, "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 [sic] healthy business. But right now, on the content side, we don’t have any pricing updates.”
While I wholly expect Microsoft to try for $80 soon, Nintendo barely got away with it, and that was with Mario Kart, the first new one in 11 years and a sequel to one of the best-selling games ever made at that. Plus, Nintendo – as annoying as it is that its games never go on sale – has kept the value of its games high, whereas Microsoft has somewhat devalued its games by giving away new AAA releases with what was at times a less than $20 subscription fee.
