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Microsoft has no plans to raise the price of its Xbox consoles right now, but plans can always change as the company evaluates the market, according to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer.
Speaking to Squawk Asia, Spencer said right now, with inflation reaching record levels and consumers feeling the squeeze of higher gas prices, it’s not the right time to make Xbox consoles more expensive.
“I can definitely say we have no plans today to raise the price of our consoles,” he said. “We think in a time when our customers are more economically challenged and uncertain than ever, we don’t think it’s the right move for us at this point to be raising price on our consoles.”
That being said, Spencer cannot say for sure if this will always be Microsoft’s position. “We’re always evaluating our business going forward. I don’t think we can ever say on anything that we’ll never do something, but when we look at our consoles today, we think value is incredibly important,” he said.
The executive added that more than half of new Xbox users are coming into the ecosystem through Xbox Series S, the lower-priced console that, at least for a period of time, was more reliably in stock than the more expensive Xbox Series X.
Spencer is talking about this in the wake of Sony’s decision to raise the price of the PS5 in many markets globally, but not the US. PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said the PS5 price increase was a “necessity given the current global economic environment and its impact on SIE’s business.”
Before Spencer’s newest comments, Microsoft issued a statement confirming there would be no Xbox price hike. The existing US MSRPs for the Series S ($300 USD) and Series X ($500) will remain in place.
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For its part, Nintendo has said it reducing the size of Switch packaging to help reduce its costs.
