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Posted by BlueBerry2001 1 hour ago

Microsoft raises Xbox prices by up to 43%(www.theverge.com)
61 points | 58 comments
kderbyma 1 hour ago|
The Era of the Gamecube, Xbox, and PS2 will forever be the best in terms of consumer value and choice and commitment to quality, followed by the Xbox360 Ps3 gen....Its been boiling the frog since end of PS4 and on, but I got out of the water by the PS5...xbox was boiled long ago and were the first to turn up the temp
VCFundedGenYer 15 minutes ago||
We shouldn't ever forget the sweet spot of the Game Boy Advance SP (proudly exclaimed "plays all games" on its box, and that wasn't a lie) and the original model of the PS3 which had full BC for every previous generation.

It's such a shame how far things have fallen since. The Switch 2 is an amicable modern day effort, but still, the industry has gotten much pricklier for the average consumer. Not to mention prices that will irreparably damage the scene.

coffeebeqn 15 minutes ago|||
We had a pretty good run there from NES onwards. Today the state of the games industry is weird - It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
deadbabe 33 minutes ago||
Can we not forget Dreamcast was also part of that era?
VCFundedGenYer 17 minutes ago||
I really don't get what MS is doing here. They claim they care about Xbox, that they're going to turn the ship around, yet they cluelessly and carelessly laid off most of their best staff, all while raising prices multiple times and still not producing a coherent future roadmap.

Any consumer or customer would look at this behavior pattern and think they are far too unstable to put their trust into.

At this point it's time to call it for Xbox. I don't think they'll be around in six months time.

codemog 1 hour ago||
The deal was they took everything from you… but at least you could buy electronics for cheap!

Now they don’t even let you have that.

inigyou 39 minutes ago||
Yeah, they've been explaining away inflation for decades by averaging housing with electronics. Yes your rent has tripled, but your TV is also 3 times as big and your gamebox has 1000 times the CPU so really, things have only gotten 2% more expensive, says the CPI calculation.

Now the politicians don't even have that excuse. I suppose they'll have to add AI tokens to CPI. Used to cost $1000 each, now $0.000002 each, average inflation is 2%.

Except they don't even have that because the recent FOMC meeting pretty much admitted inflation is 4% and they don't feel like doing anything to reduce it, but they're definitely committed to reducing it, they swear.

rustcleaner 33 minutes ago||
There is a limit on production efficiency, life is full of logistic curves which feel exponential at first until the inflection and leveling off phases.

It's going to hurt when agriculture does not see the efficiency gains it has been receiving for the last century or so. We might be at the inflection or leveling off now.

650 20 minutes ago||
Ponzi scheme stock market is also relevant here. Productivity will max out if RSI AGI doesn't pan out.
ActionHank 49 minutes ago|||
It’s because of the idiocy of p&l tracking. The hardware, store, and games all need to be independently profitable.

Once they are, they all need to be more and more profitable.

Finally when it’s no longer profitable fire half the people and strip it for parts.

They’re already dead, they just don’t know it yet.

websap 17 minutes ago|||
They lose money on every dollar they invest overall in xbox as a business. They pretty publicly documented this (which is unusual for Microsoft).

Overall gaming is a dying business. Everyone has a pretty powerful smartphone in their pockets, and there are so many platform vying for attention. AAA gaming is becoming a smaller fraction of the overall gaming pie, so I would expect prices to go up. Mobile gaming usage is up from 42% -> 55% from 2017. Even based on analysis from Steam's data, Indie games are 48% of sales, vs 24% in 2018.

thegrim33 47 minutes ago|||
Sounds like an opportunity then for you to create a competing company that functions the way you feel it should function. If that's what people value, you'll take all the business since you're the only one offering it.
darth_avocado 39 minutes ago|||
> Sounds like an opportunity then for you to create a competing company that functions the way you feel it should function

Sure, if one has millions and millions in capital. Because why would an investor put a money in my company that works the way it “should” according to me if it produces lower profits as compared to my competitors?

lotsofpulp 36 minutes ago||
Because buyers choose to spend less money, so if a business comes around that can offer the same product/service at a lower price, the investor will want to own a piece of that business rather than the one that is about to lose buyers.
saghm 3 minutes ago||
Right, because we never see investors making decisions that are suboptimal in the long term because they're too focused on short-term gains. Everyone is perfectly rational, and high initial costs have never discouraged anyone from trying to displace an established dominant player; it's purely because the dominant players are perfectly efficient and don't ever try to rent-seek.
lotsofpulp 1 minute ago||
I did not claim any of that, so not sure if your reply is misplaced.
inigyou 38 minutes ago||||
There are reasons people don't start businesses. Besides all the regulations, there's the constant struggle to pay rent.
ozgrakkurt 13 minutes ago||||
You have to be delusional if you think you are in that class that can spin up an xbox competitor
EA-3167 40 minutes ago|||
What people value is subject to marketing and long-term manipulation, not to mention a poverty of competition.
estearum 55 minutes ago||
[flagged]
sterlind 55 minutes ago||
bizarrely self-destructive behavior from XBox. they've been shooting themselves in the foot for years; apparently they've decided to exchange the gun for a flamethrower in hopes of cauterizing the stump.
bluescrn 55 minutes ago||
At this point, it’s the ExBox :(
poisonborz 1 hour ago||
With all the other Xbox layoffs, studio shutdowns, price increases, rumors of pulling titles from Steam, what do they still expect from this brand?
datakan 57 minutes ago|
Nothing. That’s why they gave it to a young woman with no achievements whatsoever in gaming and no reputation to build off of. Her job is to kill it in a way Satya can save face on so they can finish their push to everything in the cloud.
hhh 27 minutes ago|||
'No Achievements'? even just on her Wikipedia she has a great run in her career. Also the population seems to like her.
650 13 minutes ago||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asha_Sharma

Bachelor of Science in Management from University of Minnesota

Marketing role at Microsoft 2011-2013 out of college, standard average college grad role.

---

There are thousands of more intelligent, harder working, better credentialed, better achieving college grads alone at this point.

---

COO of Porch ~2013-2017 - how does one go from a standard marketing role to COO, ok whatever maybe its a smol startup

"After departing Porch, she joined Facebook as VP Product & Engineering for their Messenger and Instagram Direct products."

lmfao - more credence to the fact that most "Product" roles are leeches. VP Product and Engineering at Meta is absolutely crazy at this point in anyones career.

Management Degree -> Marketing Role -> COO of startup (lolwut) -> VP Product/Eng at Meta (cough nepotism? cough)

---

COO of Instacart in 2021 LMAO

President of Core AI at Microsoft in February 2024 LMAO

insert "i have no technical ability whatsoever"

mulderc 54 minutes ago|||
Curious that you focus so much on her gender.
CamJN 43 minutes ago|||
I don’t pretend to know GP’s motives for putting it that way, but if I was going to put on my evil hat and kill off a gaming company/division I’d also put a woman in the hot seat. Not because I think women don’t understand gaming, they do; nor that I think women can’t run successful companies, they do; but because a large chunk of the gaming market is openly misogynistic and would root for the failure outcome I was orchestrating. Hell I’d even throw in some kind of golden parachute deal because that would enflame the trolls even more. People are easy to manipulate, and that’s quite possibly what’s happening here.
fryanyway_swe 21 minutes ago||||
He just mentioned her gender.
baal80spam 48 minutes ago||||
I didn't get the impression OP focused on the gender. Is it forbidden to mention a gender if it's female?

Seems to me the one focusing on the gender is you.

speak_plainly 44 minutes ago||
I think the point is that if it's irrelevant, why mention it?
sssilver 36 minutes ago||
Would you have responded similarly if the OP wrote:

> That’s why they gave it to a young man with no achievements whatsoever in gaming and no reputation to build off of

datakan 31 minutes ago||||
Hit a nerve eh?
ohmylawd 47 minutes ago|||
[dead]
mpfh 56 minutes ago||
I don’t blame them because I don’t know all the variables involved. Neither does the media reporting and we don’t know what a company of their size is going through with prices going up and suppliers being unwilling to sell parts needed to manufacture these things.

I bought a used Xbox one a few years back. I’m not a heavy gamer anymore so I usually buy the previous generation or even two generations ago hardware, get the games I want from eBay and I’m good. And I was looking forward to getting a Series X, but at this point it looks unlikely unless the brand completely tanks and they’re selling them off to get rid of inventory. Otherwise, my Xbox one is going to be worth more in the future than what I paid, and I don’t want that situation for anyone.

ebbi 17 minutes ago||
I recently purchased an Xbox Series S for ~NZD$180 to re-play GTA4 (and Episodes) as I never got to finish it when it first came out, and to get through all the GTAs before GTA6 comes out.

512GB Series S consoles in NZ are now retailing for close to $1,000. Might have an appreciating asset on my hands!

toomuchtodo 38 minutes ago|
Valve’s gain.
bsian 21 minutes ago||
Have you seen the prices of valve’s hardware?
toomuchtodo 21 minutes ago||
I ordered a steam deck, so I have. I trust Valve to maintain the ecosystem more than I do Microsoft and Xbox, and so that is where I invest my leisure gaming dollars. The cost per year is reasonable considering how long myself and my kids will get value from it. No different from my MacBook Air and other Apple gear I’ll use for a decade.

(price is what you pay, value is what you get)

sssilver 34 minutes ago||
Valve is truly walking into the perfect storm with their current roadmap.
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