Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Xbox Consoles Raise Price, Games Move Up To $80 This Holiday - Kinda Funny Games Daily 05.01.25
Thu, 01 May 2025
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Chapter 1: Why is Xbox raising its console prices?
Bless is going heel, which excites me potentially for Game Showdown because I need something. You know what I mean? We have the finale coming up this week. I need a hero.
I'll be honest. I was pressured into the three stars thing, and now the scales have tipped in a way that I don't know if I can help, Tim. The scores are not looking good for you and Dandy. I know. What's the thing that Bear says every single time? Anybody can still win. That's not what he says.
It's still anybody's game. It's still anybody's game. Anybody can still win.
Chapter 2: What are the implications of $80 games this holiday?
Anybody can still win.
Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney Twining. Today, we are brought to you by Imperial and Aura Frames, but I'll tell you all about that later. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be the Roper Report.
It's time for some news. Five stories today.
Story number one, Microsoft raises the price of all Xbox Series consoles. Xbox games confirmed to be $80 starting this holiday. This comes from Rebecca Valentine at IGN. Microsoft is raising its prices on Xbox by a lot. In an announcement today, the company said it will be raising prices on Xbox consoles, controllers, headsets, and some games.
The price hike for consoles and accessories kicks in today, May 1st. And while the game prices will stay the same for now, we'll expect to see Xbox charging $80 for new first-party games around the holiday season. Price increases are taking effect globally with the exception of headset prices, which are only going to go up in the U.S. and Canada.
Going forward, here are the expected prices on various Xbox consoles and accessories in the United States. The... Xbox, there's so many different things here. I'm not going to read all of them, but jump into the Xbox Series S is going up to $430 from $350. The Xbox Series X is going up to $600 from $500. The Xbox wireless controllers are going to be $65 for the core one.
A colored one will be $70, and a limited edition will be $90. The Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 Core will be $150 and the full package of it will be $200. Microsoft issued IGN with the following statement as to why the price increases were taking place.
Quote, we understand that these changes are challenging and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development. Looking ahead, we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen and ensuring value for Xbox players. I want to get your thoughts on this, but you put a note here.
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Chapter 3: How is the gaming industry reacting to price hikes?
Yeah, I want to make this required viewing. Yesterday, Alana Pierce put up a video on her YouTube channel called The Video Game Industry is Screwed. And I watched this yesterday, and it was a very, very good watch. She, for the last few months, has been talking to people that work in the business side of the video games industry, people that kind of know what's up in terms of
how the numbers work and how like the trajectory has gone as far as like the financial ups and downs. And she's taken all the information that she's learned, put it into a 20 minute video and kind of just talked about her findings.
And I think the timing of this video is really good going into the news that we have today, because I think it provides a lot of context into what's been going on in the last couple of years with all the layoffs, everything's going, everything going on, but then also with prices going up and, us feeling in this place of, man, the video game industry seems fucked. And she makes a lot of points.
I think the main thing that everything boils down to is the fact that it's a... I think Matt Piscitella mentioned this on the Greg interview episode that he was on. It's the fact that it's a maturing industry. It's the fact of... And from like, this is from Alana, right? From like 2010-ish to about 2021, there was meteoric growth in the numbers of how much money video games are bringing in.
And then around the time of like 2022, you saw those numbers dip in a way that saw a lot of shareholders pull out, right? From 2010 to 2021, everybody was investing in video games. Oh man, there's so much money here. And I mean, you say esports, right? It was everything, right? Fortnite, like video games in general, honestly, like there was such a rise in terms of
how many people were jumping in to invest or at least how much money was coming in on the investment side because there's a lot of potential there that's why you see things like risk that's why you see things like you know uh uh games that aren't necessarily the live service things the things that are that have to to be money makers getting funded because you had the space to try things out and maybe fail and try another thing out right and like figure out how to turn that into a success
After you see that dip and shareholders and everybody start to pull out and put their money into other things like AI or whatever else is, you know, like whatever else is seeing that upward trajectory. That's where you're seeing these companies tighten up their pockets and go, oh, we don't have space for risk. We don't have space for failure. We don't have space for just trying things out.
Things that aren't pure profit. Things aren't pure profit, right? So that was, I think, probably the biggest bullet point out of everything she was talking about. But under that, you then have so many other things, right? She talked about how the real customers of the games industry are the shareholders, not the consumers, right? Us, we are... We are the consumers.
When you're talking about the customers and who you are appeasing with your business decisions, it is the shareholders, right? We can complain all we want about live service and about AI or whatever it is. At the end of the day, the business decisions that are being made are to appease shareholders. And I don't think this is anything...
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Chapter 4: What insights does Alana Pierce provide on the industry?
And we were taken down immediately.
Satya Nadella said, no, no, no. No, no, no. You're not going to get to talk about all this. There's so much context. It looks like the video file... Didn't corrupt.
All right. Okay.
So we just pick up from the conversation.
I was saying like, you know, there's been a couple examples of single player games doing well, independent games doing well. And you'll love to freaking see it in, in a, a huge ocean of all these big mistakes and live service here and live service there and extraction shooters and all the stuff that we look at. We're like, I don't think this is going to work.
It could, we have examples, hell divers coming out and like all of us being genuinely surprised at the success of that game. Both, critically, financially, and community-wise. Like, that game crushed, but so many different parts of games that we look at and talk about are like, I don't know about this, man. And it ends up not working. So it's tough out there. Definitely watch Alana's video.
The price increases for the consoles. It's like, there's so many factors at play here, right? Like, Nintendo put Mario Kart World out at $80, and that is... Horrible. It's horrible. There's no other way to look at it. And it's like, you know, people are going to get priced out of games. Like that is just a fact.
It's not a, a fear tactic of people saying that it's like, there are going to be people that cannot buy Mario cart because it's $80 instead of 70, because 70 was already too much for them. And there's people that couldn't buy it at 70 because they 60 was their top and people that 50 was their top. Like we see all of this and we're talking about needing a bigger, more vibrant, uh,
gaming community out there to even be able to buy and support these games that have ballooning budgets. And it feels like with these ballooning prices, we're going to have less and less people having access. And that is why things like game pass are very important and a great value, but I've said it a million times. I don't have full faith in the game pass model, not necessarily,
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Chapter 5: What challenges does the gaming community face with rising costs?
I'm seeing back.
We've had a lot of conversation about this. I feel like... We get it, right? I want to get to a bunch of super chats before we get to story number two, though. Thank you so much for super chatting in. It's a whole bunch of y'all. Raphael saying, we live in bizarro world. I would never have guessed that Microsoft raising the prices of a four-year-old console would be the headline I'd read today.
It sucks, man. Like, it's wild that, yeah, this console came out in 2020, right? Like, the end of 2020, we're getting increases. Like... Back in my day, at this point, a console would be $100. Like, they would have dropped that price three times. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I saw somebody post earlier today, like, the images of, like, promo key art of when the prices have dropped. And, like, you know, you could buy a 360 for $200. You could buy the PS4 Slim for $300. Like, all this stuff. And I'm like, man, those are the times. I forget, did they mention here...
tariffs like did microsoft at all at all mentioned verbatim like no because they're not gonna do that right like i feel like to me this is them preliminarily just getting ahead of it and just calling the shot based on where the world probably is going to be and then it can always get worse you know like this is the type of stuff that i feel like they're just getting prepared because it it's happening already and there's so much inconsistencies and questions out there but
Yeah, I mean, we talked about it a lot. Like, it's wild to now be in a post-Switch 2 pre-order world where for weeks there, we were just talking about, like, what's going to happen and where we're at now. It's like, all right, cool. Nintendo stuck to that price. I bet the Switch 2 gets more expensive later this year.
Oh, yeah. I mean, depending on what happens with the tariffs and how and where they get implemented, for sure.
And on top of that, dude, right now the Xbox Series X is pushing the price of the PS5 Pro, right? If not already there. But guess what? That's going to raise prices next week? When does PlayStation do this? I feel like it is literally moments away. I don't think that that is a long time out from now.
uh alexander aj frazier says don't forget about the issues with giant bomb and fandom corporate owners want to transition the video focus site to a guide site yeah we'll we have stories later that we're we'll get to talking about that stuff uh patrick says gotta love that quarterly reminder that uncle phil's still an executive of a trillion dollar company who just happens to play games yeah uh brusta bron says don't do too much melatonin you'll see the hat man
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Chapter 6: How is AI influencing the gaming market?
The hat man? I mean, that sounds... Is it like Slender Man? Is it like a weird horror kind of thing? Is it like... Kevin, what are those dreams that people have? Is it like your lucid dream monster? Oh, Jesus.
No, you want lucid dreams.
you want no i don't want to or no no lucid dreams are good that means you know it's a dream and you can do whatever you want what are the dreams where i'm just laying there and i'm awake but i can't move yeah that's the sleep paralysis sleep paralysis so yeah i think the hat man might be a sleep paralysis demon i i think that it just means that you have it looks like a chill dude to me because like that's how my sleep paralysis demons have worked where have you had sleep paralysis no
Oh, man, I'll have it every now and then. And, like, I'll be half asleep, essentially, but I'll be, like, seeing my room, right? And I'll see, like, my computer chair. But my computer chair will look like a person. And I'm like, oh, somebody's going to kill me. I don't like that. Like, somebody's in my room right now, and I'm looking at them.
And it's just my chair, but, like, my fucking dazed state, I'm, like, seeing it as a person. It's freaky.
I don't like that.
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Chapter 7: What does the future hold for Xbox and game accessibility?
So, yeah, if I saw the melatonin bottle, I would probably see the hat man.
Norman writes in saying, T&B, tainting balls. Mm-hmm. I work on it yeah George says till the end I will be with you we will go where our dreams come true all the times that we've been through you will always be my best friends yes George yes is that a reference to something I think it's just a song wow that's beautiful
Special K says, assuming Sony falls with these price increases, the PS5 Pro will start to have some real sticker shock at $800 or more. I mean, I feel like it started with sticker shock.
It's just going to get more and higher, man. PS5 Pro already had sticker shock. PS5 Pro is already for the sickos that are willing to shell out the money to get that kind of experience. And, I mean, I go back to the Super Chat that was, like, this is a reminder that Phil Spencer is the CEO of a trillion-dollar company where, like, I blame Phil Spencer for a lot of things.
But, like, this is an industry-wide shit is getting worse kind of thing. Yeah. Like, I don't know. It's weird.
this is gonna happen everywhere like this is one where it is like all right strap in like buckle up your your your seat belts type situation right like i don't blame phil spencer necessarily for the prices going up even though sure he's probably like a part of those conversations i'm more so like i'm fascinated by the fact that they didn't call it out as like oh yeah because the terrorists are we're not we're moving up in price and you imagine this because they don't retaliation from the government
But it's also like, I don't know, man. I don't know. Have some balls.
The chat is reminding me that George's comment here is from the Pokemon To Be A Master soundtrack. It's the song Best Friends. Do you want to be a master? I read this wrong, but it's supposed to be the till the end. I will be with you. We will go where our dreams go. Hell yeah, dude. Hell yeah, George. You know what's up. Man of taste. Zeke Speak says, watched the Alana video yesterday.
It's incredible. Also terrifying what wealthy investors are doing. We need mass organizing to stop these motherfuckers. Oh, man. DMCK says, thanks, Nintendo. I jest. But for real, this hobby is becoming more and more unaffordable. A lot of people won't be able to afford consoles and games eventually. Prices of everything is rising, but salaries are not.
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