A major takeaway from the Xbox Games Showcase last weekend was the fact that $80 Xbox games have arrived.
Huh. Must be nice.
The Outer Worlds 2 is the game that has everyone in a tizzy, as it’s the first from Xbox Games Studios to hit the new $80 USD price tag.
Accustomed to higher game prices where I live — the not-so-frozen-waste, Canada — I took a gander at what the game would set me back at launch.
I was expecting $90, but it seems I was being too optimistic. The Outer Worlds 2 costs $100 in Canadian loonies. Want the Premium Edition? That’ll be $130.
Don't forget to add taxes, which in Canada are applied at checkout. Depending on where you live, those provincial and governmental taxes climb up to 15% combined.
That pushes the Standard Edition up to $115 and the Premium Edition up to about $150 for Canadians when it's all said and done.
My "Old man yells at cloud" moment is finally here
I understand that modern video games are not cheap to produce, especially on the scale of something like The Outer Worlds 2, a sprawling open-world RPG that I'm truly excited to play. I want game devs to get paid so that they keep making more games.
I also note the fact that there are countless thousands of other, more reasonably priced games to play, especially if you have access to Steam and its mega sales that run a few times per year.
But at what point do average gamers get priced out of the market for new, AAA games?
This is a bit of an “old man yells at cloud” rant, as it doesn’t seem so long ago that I was dropping $50 CAD on new games with my fortune amassed from an after-school job.
It only takes a quick look at the Bank of Canada's wages statistics page to see that most people aren't making much more money than they did in 2004, when I was buying games for half the price they are now.
And TOW2 looks like a bargain compared to some of the new first-party Nintendo Switch 2 games, which parents are no doubt more interested in buying for their kids.
Super Mario Kart World, for example, is $110 CAD before taxes. Super Mario Party Jamboree? That'll be $115, and bump that by $17 in taxes at checkout.
How did we arrive here so quickly? My colleague Richard Devine summed up the situation, saying:
“As soon as Nintendo decided to go down this route, we knew it would be inevitable. Xbox has also increased prices recently and made no secret that it wouldn't just be hardware.”
It's worth pointing out that Brandon Adler, The Outer World's 2's director, commented on the fallout after the game's price reveal, saying that Xbox set the price and that he wishes everyone could play his game.
As Devine notes in his piece, the rising prices of Xbox Games Studio titles could be a strategy by Microsoft to drive Game Pass subscriptions.
I do love Game Pass and I consider it an excellent value, but not everyone wants another subscription fee coming out of their account every month.
Exchange rates don't make my wallet any heavier
I know the main argument against what I've written here involves exchange rates, but knowing that I'm paying less in other currencies doesn't make me any richer.
Without digging too deep into currency exchange, $80 USD equates roughly to $109 CAD with today's rate. So while we are technically getting a deal up here in the North, it certainly doesn't feel like it.
The UK/EU has also seen price increases recently, and the new £70 price tag (which includes taxes before checkout) for a game like TOW2 equates to about $129 CAD.
Yay, I guess?
How are you feeling about video game prices where you live? Let me know in the comments section below.
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