What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
Yesterday we wrote about yet more XBox layoffs - the third wave of Microsoft layoffs in September alone.
But wait, there's more: as shown in [1] below, XBox is getting stigmatised, prices soar, and people leave in droves [2-5].
It has gotten so bad that even a Former XBox VP now openly says that XBox is "dead" [6].
One more site has just said in relation to this: "Mass layoffs and studio closures, turns out, did not sufficiently satiate Microsoft’s almighty Line – which remains buoyed, increasingly precariously, by the AI bubble."
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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This Xbox Generation Will Be Remembered for One Thing: Greed
IGN Senior Executive Editor and Unlocked podcast host Ryan McCaffrey reacts to Microsoft's recent price increases on consoles, software, and Xbox Game Pass and how they fly in the face of the player-first decisions that Xbox had continually made since Phil Spencer took over the Xbox business.
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“I’m Canceling My Subscription”: Xbox Players Call to “Boycott” Game Pass “Hard” Over 50% Price Increase As Microsoft’s Website Crashes from Mass Cancellations
Microsoft just raised the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to $29.99/month, and fans aren’t happy. Many are canceling, some are calling for a boycott, and even Microsoft’s website is struggling to keep up.
Microsoft officially rolled out the biggest change to Xbox’s Game Pass since it launched, and it’s not going over well. Earlier today, the company announced the massive changes where the subscription has been renamed into three tiers: Essential at $9.99 a month, Premium at $14.99, and Ultimate at $29.99. That Ultimate plan is seeing a 50% price jump from its old $19.99 price tag, and fans aren’t happy.
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Xbox Has Driven Game Pass Off A Cliff And Taken Us All With It
This morning, Xbox revealed in a press release on their blog that they are once again increasing the price of Game Pass, and this time they may have actually hit a breaking point. The service once hailed as “the best value in gaming” has separated out into 3 tiers that are reminiscent of competitor PlayStation Plus, with Essential, Premium, and Ultimate. Here’s the kicker: the Ultimate tier of Game Pass, which is the only tier that gets you Xbox games on release date, has moved from $20 USD to $30 a month, effective right now.
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Microsoft slaps Game Pass Ultimate with a staggering 50% price hike
I’ve often considered that Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass is the best deal in gaming, if you’re looking to get a huge amount of variety and access for a small monthly fee. I might have to recalculate after the latest price hike. This morning Microsoft announced prices going up in the U.S. by quite a lot, rising from $19.99 to $29.99 USD for the all-you-can-play Ultimate package.
That still includes hundreds of local and streaming games (heavily featuring titles published by Microsoft’s various studios, of course) across Xbox and PC, and sometimes jumping between them. Microsoft is also trying to convince players that the increased price comes with extra incentives, including a new selection of “classics” from the Ubisoft+ catalog of digital games. There’s also a new partnership with Epic which includes the Fortnite Crew subscription starting in November. This adds a bunch of skins and digital currency for the popular battle royale game.
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Game Pass gets major price hike 'to offer more flexibility, choice, and value,' Microsoft says with a completely straight face
Canadians of a certain age will likely recall the Friendly Giant urging them to "look up—way up" at the beginning of each of his children's television adventures. I thought of those words today in the wake of Microsoft's announcement of an overhaul of its Game Pass program, which among other things is now a whole lot more expensive than it used to be.
In an announcement reminiscent of Phil Spencer's comments about how great things are looking at Xbox as the company laid off 9,000 people, the Xbox team said "creator participation and player engagement in Game Pass are at an all-time high." But, it continued, "we have the opportunity for Game Pass to help more players find the creators and games they love."
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'Your Console Is Dead:' Former Xbox VP Says PlayStation Has Officially Won the Console Wars
A former Blizzard and Microsoft executive has publicly declared the Xbox dead on social media, in the wake of Sony seeing record profits with the PlayStation 5 generation.
The current console generation got off to a rocky start, with the pandemic throttling the number of systems that could be shipped. Now that things have evened out, a clear winner has emerged, with the PlayStation 5 selling an estimated 75 million units, while the Xbox Series X/S is said to have sold less than half that number.
