Microsoft’s first-party Xbox titles are getting a price hike next year

If you’re planning on buying some Xbox titles made by Microsoft, you might want to pick them up by the end of 2022.

As reported by The Verge, Microsoft has announced that it is raising the prices of its first-party Xbox game titles by $10 in 2023. This means that new titles like the upcoming Forza Motorsport, Redfall, and Starfield will all cost $70 instead of the current $60 price for titles that are part of the Xbox Game Studios family.

The company provided the following statement regarding the price increase, noting that all of the titles will also be available on Xbox Game Pass as an alternative to the price hike:

We’ve held on price increases until after the holidays so families can enjoy the gift of gaming. Starting in 2023 our new, built for next-gen, full-priced games, including Forza Motorsport, Redfall, and Starfield, will launch at $69.99 USD on all platforms. This price reflects the content, scale, and technical complexity of these titles. As with all games developed by our teams at Xbox, they will also be available with Game Pass the same day they launch.

The announcement doesn’t come as a surprise. A number of other studios with titles on both Xbox and Playstation have already raised their games to the $70 price point. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, in an interview on Decoder in October, alluded to the idea that the company would be raising prices on its games after the 2022 holiday season.

“We’ve held price on our console, we’ve held price on games and our subscription. I don’t think we’ll be able to do that forever,” admitted Spencer in an interview in October. “I do think at some point we’ll have to raise some prices on certain things, but going into this holiday we thought it was really important that we maintain the prices that we have.”

The upcoming price hike continues to make Xbox Game Pass an even better deal for gamers looking to play many of the new titles without having to shell out $70 per game. We’ll have to see how players respond and either continue to pay the extra money or choose the subscription model.