News Microsoft Hikes Prices of Xbox Series X, Game Pass Worldwide

[PlaneInTheSky]

"People only buy consoles for exclusives", this is so false on so many fronts.

I said "People buy consoles for exclusives".

Why did you add the "only" into my sentence.

You don't quote a person with quotation marks and then add some words in between. That's very dishonest.

And yes people buy specific consoles for exclusives.

I'm sure there's some other reasons, but the driving force behind the choice of consoles are the exclusives. The Zeldas, Pokemons, Final Fantasy, etc.

And it's not just consoles. Look at Streaming platforms, it's often these exclusive shows that you can't watch anywhere else that are the main drivers of subscriptions. Look at Netflix their quarterly earnings report, it's often specific shows exclusive to their platform driving up revenue.

Xbox has been very dismissive about exclusives. They know exclusives are very powerful, but they wanted to focus on getting Game Pass on every platform instead. Microsoft wanted to be "platform agnostic". They made a mistake imo, game pass is not very interesting just because it does not have interesting exclusives.

 

[IamNotChatGpt]

lmao, what are you smoking.

The reason Nintendo Switch sells like crazy is Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc. Of course it's the exclusives.

Of the 20 best selling games in history (on any platform), 10 of those are Nintendo exclusives developed by Nintendo. No game developer in history has sold more games than Nintendo.

I'm glad the first thing that came to your mind is that I must be consuming illicit substances....How this passed without getting deleted is beyond me but I have much crazier stories with THW team.

Why you quoted *my* experience of nobody buying for exlusivity is completely random, no idea what you want to debate there so I will see it as a mistake on your end.

Secondly, yes people decide between Xbox and PS5 whether their friend has which console, unless you have no friends or they have no console at all. Really great to own an Xbox, yet all your friends own a PS5......

lastly to you and @newtechldtech yes, both of you are wrong. Exclusivity is bad and anyone supporting it is against the consumer. There is no reason why consoles can't have the same games. We are not talking about a difference between 68000 assembly and Perl.

No. There is no hardware limitation (both consoles perform roughly around the same ball park [aka it is not the difference between an fx 8350 or nvidia onboard graphics n405 versus latest ryzen or 4090.
It is not the difference between a phone and a fairly low-medium budget PC.
<--- I don't care about the switch, no idea why you keep bringing it up, the switch is not a console comparable to the computational power of the PS5 and Xbox. Literally don't care.

There is no reason other than to muddy the water.
I genuinely believe the only reason why people support this anti-consumer practice is to justify their plastic box and brand loyalty, which to me is really sad as it is a net lose-lose (except the manufacturer wins without paying a salary for this free bolstering PR show).

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

lastly to you and @newtechldtech yes, both of you are wrong. Exclusivity is bad and anyone supporting it is against the consumer.

Oh I'm not a fan of exclusives. I would instantly buy Zelda if it was (legally) on PC through Steam or GoG.

And of course it's anti-consumer and anti-competitive to lock these exclusives behind a platform. It's "tying".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

But I also realize that exclusives drive sales. And Nintendo knows damn well that if they made Zelda and Animal Crossing available on other platforms, the relative power of their platform would greatly diminish.

 

[IamNotChatGpt]

Oh I'm not a fan of exclusives. I would instantly buy Zelda if it was (legally) on PC through Steam or GoG.

And of course it's anti-consumer and anti-competitive to lock these exclusives behind a platform. It's "tying".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

But I also realize that exclusives drive sales. And Nintendo knows damn well that if they made Zelda and Animal Crossing available on other platforms, the relative power of their platform would greatly diminish.

Again, I would not compare switch to consoles.
I have no idea what architecture the ancient weak switch uses, is it even comparable to the Xbox & Console? The control input is different.

Not everything has to be ported though. Like you don't see [whatever people play on their phones] on PS5&XBox despite the fact that the mentiones consoles have the computational power. With the switch I can kind of understand because it is further away from the Xbox and PS5 than they are closer to each other, also Nintendo is [redacted]. Literally don't care about switch. Exclusive or not, Nintendo is mentally insane and they can go under for all I care about. (of course it absolutely shouldn't be exclusive but you know what I mean).

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

FFXVI that just came out is exclusive to PS5 (it might one day come to PC, but no one knows).

Yoshi P, the producer of FF, just flat out said people should buy a PS5 if they want to play the game. There is some arrogance in his message because he knows people would actually buy a PS5 to get access to this game.

Square Enix is clearly being paid by Sony to launch Final Fantasy exclusively to Playstation, everyone knows it.

These exclusives are also driving Playstation sales, every gaming site is talking about FF16 right now.

 

[ET3D]

source ?

That referred to the PS5 variants. Reducing the cooler size and weight is a cost saving (both for construction and for shipping).

 

[10tacle]

I guess you missed the part (mentioned in this article) about Sony upping the price in most of the world. Microsoft is just following suit.

Oh I didn't miss it at all. I just wanted to hear from all the people whining about the price increase and why it is the fault of Microsoft and Sony and not with their nation's market environment!

Or, considering what you said, Sony both reduced the production cost and upped the price.

First, Sony has not increased the MSRP of either version (digital or disc) since the launch. There has to be a waterline to stick to in price reference, and just crying about what it costs in your country compared to other countries is not it. And as I already mentioned, they have improved it every year so far with the current version (that again I have) being the biggest change internally in design.

There was certainly some R&D cost there that has to be actualized before looking into long term savings of production and any shipping costs (IF there is any savings in shipping since these things are still packed in the exact same size box). I worked in logistics for 10 years and from my seat, overseas shipping container companies charge by the cubic foot predominately.

Second, based on supply chain challenges over the years since the PS5 launch and increase costs of raw materials (let alone shipping costs), I highly doubt there have been any production cost decreases over the past 3 years. Now what is guaranteed is a basic economics factor: Sony long ago maxed out their economies of scale cost decrease with production numbers.

 

[The Anti-Chadite]

lmao, what are you smoking.

The reason Nintendo Switch sells like crazy is Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc. Of course it's the exclusives.

Of the 20 best selling games in history (on any platform), 10 of those are Nintendo exclusives developed by Nintendo. No game developer in history has sold more games than Nintendo.

Hardly, any monkey with a keyboard and a pair of pennies could play this stuff on PC.

 

[The Anti-Chadite]

FFXVI that just came out is exclusive to PS5 (it might one day come to PC, but no one knows).

Yoshi P, the producer of FF, just flat out said people should buy a PS5 if they want to play the game. There is some arrogance in his message because he knows people would actually buy a PS5 to get access to this game.

Square Enix is clearly being paid by Sony to launch Final Fantasy exclusively to Playstation, everyone knows it.

These exclusives are also driving Playstation sales, every gaming site is talking about FF16 right now.

Lol, it'll be less than a week before PC users are playing it.

 

[txfeinbergs]

Oh I didn't miss it at all. I just wanted to hear from all the people whining about the price increase and why it is the fault of Microsoft and Sony and not with their nation's market environment!



First, Sony has not increased the MSRP of either version (digital or disc) since the launch. There has to be a waterline to stick to in price reference, and just crying about what it costs in your country compared to other countries is not it. And as I already mentioned, they have improved it every year so far with the current version (that again I have) being the biggest change internally in design.

There was certainly some R&D cost there that has to be actualized before looking into long term savings of production and any shipping costs (IF there is any savings in shipping since these things are still packed in the exact same size box). I worked in logistics for 10 years and from my seat, overseas shipping container companies charge by the cubic foot predominately.

Second, based on supply chain challenges over the years since the PS5 launch and increase costs of raw materials (let alone shipping costs), I highly doubt there have been any production cost decreases over the past 3 years. Now what is guaranteed is a basic economics factor: Sony long ago maxed out their economies of scale cost decrease with production numbers.

They increased the cost $50 last year so not sure what world you live in.

PS5 price to increase in select markets due to global economic environment, including high inflation rates

New recommended retail price coming to select markets in the EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regions, plus Canada.

blog.playstation.com

 

[10tacle]

They increased the cost $50 last year so not sure what world you live in.

PS5 price to increase in select markets due to global economic environment, including high inflation rates

New recommended retail price coming to select markets in the EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regions, plus Canada.

blog.playstation.com

^^SOME markets only as I stated. And as I stated, because "select markets" have inflationary economic conditions different than others is not the same thing as Sony (and Microsoft) raising the price globally across the board in every nation - which they did not do.

So in effect it's the same thing as trying to say Nvidia jacked up their GPUs when it's just in Europe because of the VAT and other conditions in those nations. That doesn't mean Nvidia flat across the company raised their prices. So what world do I live in? The one where the PS5 is the same MSRP as when launched in Q4 2020.

 

[newtechldtech]

^^SOME markets only as I stated. And as I stated, because "select markets" have inflationary economic conditions different than others is not the same thing as Sony (and Microsoft) raising the price globally across the board in every nation - which they did not do.

So in effect it's the same thing as trying to say Nvidia jacked up their GPUs when it's just in Europe because of the VAT and other conditions in those nations. That doesn't mean Nvidia flat across the company raised their prices. So what world do I live in? The one where the PS5 is the same MSRP as when launched in Q4 2020.

The price increase has nothing to do with VAT .