Xbox boss says ‘now is not the right time for us to raise console prices’

Microsoft’s head of gaming has said the company currently has no plans to increase Xbox console prices.

In August, citing the challenging global economic environment, Sony raised PS5 prices in Europe, Japan and parts of North America.

Following Sony‘s announcement, the UK arms of both Microsoft and Nintendo told VGC that they weren’t currently planning to raise console prices.

And in a new interview with CNBC, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said Microsoft doesn’t view this as the right time to adjust its console pricing strategy – although he added that doing so in the future can’t be ruled out.

“We’re always evaluating our business going forward. So, I don’t think we can ever say on anything that we will never do something,” he said. “But when we look at our consoles today, and you talked about it—Series X and Series S—we think value is incredibly important. We love the position of Series S in the market, which is our lower cost console. Over half of our new players that we’re finding are coming in through Series S.

“And I can definitely say we have no plans today to raise the price of our consoles,” Spencer continued. “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 prices on our console.”

Data and analytics firm Ampere Analysis recently predicted that the PS5 price increase is likely to have “a minimal impact on sales”.

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“While we believe there will be disappointment for some consumers that have been trying to buy a PS5 without success, or that were saving to buy the console just in time for the price to increase, the high pent up-demand for Sony’s device means that this price increase of around 10% across most markets will have minimal impact on sales of the console,” said Piers Harding-Rolls, Ampere’s research director for games.

Spencer said last month that he doesn’t think Microsoft will be able to satisfy demand for Xbox consoles this holiday season.