Former Blizzard President Mike Ybarra has criticized Microsoft's new pricing policy, saying that the second Xbox console price increase in a year cannot be justified by trade duties. According to him, the company is trying to increase profits at the expense of customers, hiding behind external factors.
Last week, Microsoft announced a price increase for Xbox Series consoles. Now the Xbox Series X model with a 2TB drive costs $799.99, while at the beginning of the year its price was $599.99. Thus, the cost has increased by $200 in a year — this is the second increase in a year. The first was explained by the growth of American duties, but, according to Ybarra, the current adjustment is due to other reasons.
«This is not a question of duties, it is a question of profit. And the reason why profit does not reach the desired level is much deeper than justifying duties.»
He noted that the first one-time increase could be justified by tariffs, but further price increases indicate systemic problems that Microsoft is trying to compensate for at the expense of users. «They are going to make consumers continue to pay for these problems», he wrote on X/Twitter, hinting at Microsoft's systemic problems, due to which the studio conducted several waves of layoffs and canceled projects such as the Perfect Dark remake and the ambitious «survival» Everwild from Rare.