Supposedly, they’re rolling back the price increase for all holiday releases.
“We’re focused on bringing players incredible worlds to explore, and will keep our full priced holiday releases, including The Outer Worlds 2, at $69.99 – in line with current market conditions,” an Xbox spokesperson explained in a statement to Windows Central.
If you’ve already pre-ordered The Outer Worlds 2 at the $79.99 price point, you will have to grab refunds at the point of purchase if you’ve already paid up. Microsoft says some retailers will light up with refunds today, but some will start accepting refunds from tomorrow. Then, you can pre-order again at the new $69.99 price tier.
I think it’s mostly because these price increases are happening at the same time as the publishers are raking in record profits. It also doesn’t help that a lot of the games seeing the increase are subpar cash grabs.
I don’t see any problems with charging more than $60 for a game as long as the game is worth what they’re asking. I bought Metaphor Refantazio and TotK at a full $70 and felt both were worth that (screw Nintendo, but the game’s really good).
Development costs have increased drastically in the past couple decades, and while the customer base has also increased quite a bit, I think the market is reaching saturation.
I think that while greed is the most common reason for the increase, there are some legitimate reasons people should take into account before denouncing every price increase.