Xbox first party titles expected to hit $80 USD this holiday; Game Pass pricing currently unchanged.
As we are all switching from Windows to Linux, I’m actually surprised Microsoft is doing this. I guess they really don’t want to be competitive in the consumer market anymore. I guess they are making enough money through military contracts now that they don’t need to cater to us.
We all? I mean, I have, but we represent single digit percentages of the market, which is why they keep shoving more bullshit into Windows that no one wants, because hardly anyone leaves Windows. The most that this affects Linux gamers is if you like their controllers or individual games that they publish, but that would be the same as on Windows as well.
We all, all of me. I don’t have to care about what others are buying, because Steam and Linux is an amazing gaming experience and they’re the ones missing out. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
But your entire point was based on the idea that people are switching to Linux in droves…
That was somebody else’s point. I just chimed in with my own take. :D
Haha my bad! I’m usually good at looking for usernames, but I definitely didn’t look this time. Carry on, my bad
Truth. I swapped my laptop to linux a couple weeks ago, and then my ROG Ally, and next I’m putting linux on my gaming desktop. Just trying to decide on a distro for that one.
On my laptop I switched from Debian to Fedora and that had a distinct impact on gaming performance, though I think it had more to do with how I had it set up previously. For instance I used full disk encryption for Debian, but skipped that on Fedora, because it does seem to impact games noticeably.
But it also might be because Fedora is more bleeding edge, so the OS itself might actually play a role here.
On my desktop I’ve been running Bazzite and that’s been pretty great so far.
I have fedora on my laptop, and it seems to game fine. I do have full disk encryption on. Maybe if I turn that off I’ll get even better performance? I have Bazzite on the ROG ally and that is doing really good. I’m thinking about putting fedora on the desktop
After my series s becomes irrelevant, I’m switching to a PC.
I pretty much switched to the Steam Deck, but I still have a backlog of games on Xbox that I may end up with one or two last Xboxes if my Series S dies for any reason. Hopefully it lives long enough that I don’t have to get a new Xbox sometime in the future.
I still use my Xbox One to play some Battlefield games. But I’m never buying a new console ever again. Fuck Microsfot. Fuck Sony. And you know what Nintendo fuck you too. Price gouging, greedy fucks the lot of them. PC+emulators is now the way to go, fuck all these greedy companies.
Wait till you find out about Nvidia and AMD
Unfortunately greed is rampant in the PC market, too.
Oh no.
Anyway.
I wonder if the price increase will be spent on making a chart that tells me which XBox is which?
I don’t know exactly when I got old, but I feel angry every time Xbox reminds me that I’m too old to know which is which.
Slowly being turned towards the sea
The last three games I paid for were Minecraft, Factorio and Dwarf Fortress (pre-Kitfox).
I haven’t needed a new one since that.
My last Xbox was Xbox one. Never going back.
That’ll fix their record low sales!
“Fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some cash for our console, it’s called xCloud”
Microsoft may as well just cancel their whole Xbox hardware business. Xbox Series is a secondary market for Microsoft games after PlayStation and any console successor they release is going to limp to the starting line. At least the XSX had hype from the Bethesda acquisition and previous Obsidian/Inxile/etc acquisitions
Really we all need a Steam Deck 2 and a stronger Valve produced Strix Halo mini-PC
It’s looking like the Xbox will stick around as a cheap entry point into Game Pass and the games that Microsoft publishes themselves. Yes, I know, it’s not as cheap as it used to be, but still fairly capable for a game machine at that price. The Steam mini PC is likely on its way. A couple of months back, there were leaks of the new Steam controller that leaked on their way to be mass produced after finalizing the design, so they’d probably accompany the living room machine. In the meantime, I have a mini PC running Bazzite that’s been awesome, but with tariffs in the US, you won’t be able to get the same performance per dollar that I got.
Xbox will stick around as a cheap entry point into Game Pass
Not after these price increases
It’s strange really. You can buy 4 extremely good indie games for the price of one game. And that’s at a 20 each.
And with steam sales and sharing…valve is fun.
Trying to raise the “standard” price to $80 will have very nice ripple effects of more pricing diversity, where each game will really consider what it’s actually worth, which we haven’t had for a long time. Even now we’re getting first-party Microsoft titles releasing at $20, $30, and $50.
I think all it will do is raise the ceiling of what publishers are willing to price games at. If they think they can get away with it, they’ll charge $80 instead of $70, with the rest being $70 and less just like it already is now.
Steam doesn’t advertise at the scale of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. It won’t have a ripple effect because it won’t change the degree to which artificial hype drives people towards the “Buy” button.
A lot of games priced at $70 right now are having a rough go of it, so charging more on top of that isn’t going to help, but there are the likes of South of Midnight and Clair Obscur launching at $50. If your game isn’t as hot of a commodity as Mario Kart, you’re probably going to try to lure people in with a lower price.
there are the likes of South of Midnight and Clair Obscur launching at $50.
Beautiful games, both. But again, they aren’t having the full court press of advertising like a new Call of Duty or Final Fantasy or Diablo would.
That’s the real cost savings. You don’t need to change $80+ for a game if you aren’t focused entirely on presale figures to justify your studio’s budget.
Incidentally, you also get to focus on a better game. Balatro didn’t need wall to wall subway ads in New York to end up on everyone’s phones.
Steam doesn’t need to. It’s got the steam sale and a hundred million people to share memes of “sale so good spent all my money no time to play all the games I bought in such massive sale”
You don’t need to promote if everyone else does it for you lol.
How much is Factorio worth though, everything?
The amount of time I’ve put in it could have cost me $200 and it would still be one of the best $/hr games I have
I bought it long before the steam release, back when multiplayer was in experimental. So glad that there are 1000s of hours that were never tracked so I don’t need to see those.
If they charged according to value no one on Earth could afford to buy it
Yeah Ex33 at $50 to me was a welcome surprise
To run the games i wanna play would require a pc worth 3 ps5s
Edit: people here don’t like facts, but where I live a pc that matches a ps5 is around $1500+ it you’re lucky. Yes your pc is better than my ps5 in the same way that your Ferrari is better than my Honda. But I like Hondas.
You can also tweak the graphics settings and get a budget PC.
Again, no. Why not just get a ps2? I want current gen games and I know that for this to be comparative on pc it costs nearly triple
You can play other games, there is so much to choose from just drop the expensive ones.
Again no, that’s not my taste. I’m just saying steam doesn’t work for most people. The convenience of a console alone is always gonna keep me. To know i can buy a game 5 years after the console is released and it’ll run. PC gaming is superior, but it costs way more and takes way more work. Im it’s not convenient for casual people like me, especially since I want to sit on my couch with a controller and not have to interact with a computer
*laugh sitting on the couch playing PC games off steam using a tv to display and a wireless controller
What are you even talking about …enjoy paying more for less, and paying monthly to play games while also being locked to whatever terms they decide all willy nilly.
Steam doesn’t work for most people? You sure about that? It has 132 Million active users, that’s nearly double the number of PS 5s that have been sold!
Very odd comparison, you need to buy a ps5 to be a ps5 user, you don’t need to buy anything to be a steam user, you just need to sign up and you’re considered a user.
Very odd comparison…
Not really. There are more people using Steam than own a PS5 or Xbox X. So in what reality does Steam “not work for most people”?
you just need to sign up and you’re considered a user.
You’ll note that I used Steam’s ACTIVE user statistic. That’s not people who just “signed up”, those are people playing games on Steam.
Steam works just fine for most people.
If you can afford the cost of console game prices, more power to you. They’re pricing me out and I know I’ll have no choice but to switch to PC in the future if I want to be able to keep playing games.
you dont own those games brotherman
Not ALL steam games have DRM. Yes, you should buy from GOG whenever you can, but if you use Linux like me, GOG doesn’t give a shit. It can be hard to decide, support DRM free games and proper ownership with GOG, or expanding compatibility with Linux and improve it in general. If its cheaper on steam cause of a sale or something, I’ll buy on steam, then years later like with DOOM 2016 for example, I’ll buy it when it hits like 4 bucks on gog. That way, I have acces to an offline installer, and I show support and interest to valve for investing in proton.
Another option is to buy through Heroic Games Launcher. Heroic gets a cut, and GOG sees what they’d have to do to earn your entire dollar.
Completely forgot about that, I do really like the Heroic Launcher.
What? You can buy gog games through heroic?
Yeah, it just launches a web browser in the client, but behind the scenes, it’s using a referral code in partnership with GOG to make sure they get a cut. So you can support DRM-free and Linux gaming support at the same time.
thanks for spreading the word
looks like the solution i needed for all the smaller more useless launchers. wich it included connectability to ea/ubi/battleNet’s launchers too
Xbox for example seems more solid to me as a gamerscore addict for example. Steam obviously the main standard you wouldnt want to compress
I’d almost argue the same with modern consoles with all the crappy digital bullshit and planned obsolescence
Your not wrong. If it weren’t for steam being absolutely stellar than I wouldn’t be buying games from them. I would try to go through gog. But with their work on proton alone I personally give them a pass.
if anyone was looking for a good time to switch to PC, it’s now. some stuff will be harder but you’ll have steam sales and control over your own device (more than a console anyway, if your running windows you’ll still have to put up with Microsoft).
if your running windows you’ll still have to put up with Microsoft
Luckily, there is another choice. Linux runs pretty smooth and has gotten much simpler to use over the years.
All hail Proton!
that’s what I was implying I switched back in August
Plus steam deck is pretty solid.
I have Win11 at work and its frustrating as hell. Definitely switching over to linux when I decide to buy a new pc
Yeah, I’ve been an xnbox user since 360 but I don’t think I’ll stick with another console.
I’ve been looking at handheld PC`s…
personally I prefer a laptop over a handheld but those should work decent too
PC Linux Sales
Weren’t consoles supposed to be the cheaper, more convenient option?
They were until an orange bitch started a trade war. Now everything is going to be too expensive, consoles and PCs alike.
To be fair, the trade war was going on long before trump enacted tariffs.
If you ever saw someone spreading FUD about Huawei or Tiktok, it’s because they’re peddling rhetoric put there by our rulers to stoke the fires.
I mean, barring Nintendo, they still are and will continue to be as long as you don’t need to have games on day one. I very rarely spend more than $20 on Xbox games. Most AAA games go on sale within the first few months. $70 Ubisoft titles will literally be $15 a month after release, not that Ubisoft makes much worth buying these days but it was just an example. The digital storefronts (again, not Nintendo) have sales constantly, you just need a little impulse control.
Well, that settles it. $80 games is going to be the new standard and Sony will quickly trail along. Oh well, nothing much has changed for patient gamers.
$80 on release day. $60 a month later. $40 a year later. $20 a year after that.
What you’re paying for isn’t the game, its the hype. An enormous component of a modern AAA game’s budget is just advertising. That’s what your $80 is going towards. You’re paying to have people tell you to buy it.
Even assuming you don’t feel like pirating… Just be patient, play something that came out a few years ago, wait for the next Steam Sale, and own the game for pennies on the dollar.
An enormous component of anything is advertising, I don’t see your point.
I agree with the first paragraph, not the ones after
https://mainleaf.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-market-a-video-game/#elementor-toc__heading-anchor-0
As a rule of thumb, you’re looking at 25-50% of a AAA game’s budget going to advertising. So a $40 game becomes an $80 game in large part because the publisher is putting out $10Ms-$100Ms just to raise name recognition and build hype.
Except that if no advertising is done, the game’s sales are probably a lot lower (which is why they do it). If the game doesn’t do well initially, it’s less likely that you’ll find it years later as well
Yeah, buy most games at half price or less, fully patched up and with all the DLCs. Such a joy!
Oh well, nothing much has changed for patient gamers.
Aye. I wait until games are finished before torrenting them.
Feels good being off the consumer bandwagon. Games are coming out faster than I can beat the ones that came out years ago. I have enough digital entertainment for the rest of my life without ever having to spend a dime.
