Phil Spencer Apologises For 'Angst And Emotion' Caused By Xbox Live Gold Price Hike

With respect our Phil, you can’t keep using the same old line “ We Will learn from it”
It’s getting old now.
Just don’t make the dumb arse decision in the first place.
Just console sales wise Nintendo and Sony are already kicking your arse, don’t make it even easier for them.

Fair play for rolling this back.

Whole thing was a bit of a nightmare, starting with the leak of the Xbox credit from the store.

This wouldn’t have impacted me as a GPU subscriber and did seem very steep in comparison. Would like to hear some of the thinking behind the initial decision to increase but appreciate that won’t happen.

Now imagine if everybody had just accepted this. Kinda like we see people accepting and even defending micros and $70 games.

This is why it's ok for people to complain

Actually they picked on the wrong product.
If they had put the price up of Game Pass Ultimate up from £11.99 a month to about £14.99 a month.
There would have been a few moans, but because of the great value and the now EA have joined in, they would have got away with that one.

@Richnj
£70 games in UK is a piss take, I know some PS5 gamers that have not purchased certain games because of it. GODFALL being the best example now already £37 in some shops.
But Sony will take absolutely no notice of that.
As they know with their big hitters HZD2 etc they will get away with it. Time will tell.

@Dezzy70 that £70 price tag is one of the reasons I sold my PS5 after realising how expensive it was going to be (that and I got offered silly money for it). Sony must have some idea thats its simply wrong though as Godfall was a huge flop, Demon's Souls didn't sell brilliantly and they had to delay Destruction All Stars and announce it going to PS Plus because so few people pre ordered it

@Dezzy70 I think you’re spot on. Very hard to argue with an increase to GPU, I think it’s a complete steal at the moment.

Just like the always online drm, , first to make a paywall to play online and this... microsoft is always looking a way to screw you over. Hope nobody ever uses the word consumer friendly ever again.

@carlos82 You could always wait for sales. Seems you can't hold yourself not to buy sony games day 1. Godfall is the worst scored game of the ps5 right now. It was really bad from what I've seen. Destruction All stars is nowhere near worth $70.

Souls games never sell that great. People are scared of a challenge, but imo it's the best game of ps5 and I see a graphical improvement to justify the $70. We will have to see how Returnal manages it. If it's not this goty contender game, people won't jump in.

I think with Ratchet, God of War, Horizon 2 and Gran turismo would get away with it. Graphically they'll look better and have the franchise popular name.

They need to sort themselves out because they put one step forward and two steps back.

Fair play to actually making the backtrack, but they can't keep saying "we will learn from this" every time they mess up.
If they'd learn from mistakes, they wouldn't keep making them.

@blinx01
Exactly what I put early.
They need to think deeper before making decisions.

@carlos82
I had a PS5 it’s now been sold.
I have series x and Nintendo switch.
They both seem to complement each other very well. It’s a cool set up those two together.

"Angst and emotion". F**k off 😂

The voical minority wins again pathetic....

If you cant aford gaming you should get a new cheaper hobby. I had no problem with the price hike. should we all now whine about our favourite streaming services price hike or the the rising price of electicity. Or $70 games.... Oh wait we aready do that one or the rising cost of health care or your favorite fast joint. Prices go up in life get use to it.

I don't think this is the PR stunt people believe it is. They generated a lot of bad will with that move. Reversing after it was a good decision, but people will remember that MS can change the price whenever they want with little notice.

@LiterallyDoNotCare I'll probably jump back on board with PS5 in a year or so but my priority is building a PC at the moment. Spider-Man was fun but extremely short, I've got Demon's Souls for PS3 and I had a go on PS5 and it was very pretty but its essentially the same game, I like it but wouldn't say I'm a big enough fan to want to play it again.

@carlos82 I still don't know why would you sell any of the 3 consoles. You know games are coming and like you said, you are still thinking of getting one.

@Dezzy70 if people weren't paying ridiculous prices I'd have kept it but it paid for a Series S and large part of my PC build so I'm happy, yeah the Switch is a great console to have with one of these

@LiterallyDoNotCare because I got double my money, if anything it would have been crazy to keep it as I have nothing to play on it now or for the foreseeable future. I certainly wouldn't have sold it otherwise

Ok since gold is no longer needed for free2play games whats the point to gold now.... Drop gold lower the price of gamepass.

@carlos82 oooooh. hahahahahaha

@Gaming365247 2k, fifa, madden, call of duty, siege, overwatch, gta5, soon mlb etc...

Now back to 4 games a months and cancel Gears 5

I guarantee you this wasn't Phil Spencer doing, This was coming from the very top and i bet the lower powers had to talk some sense into these corporate jerkoffs.. P.S. in Phil we trust..

@Gaming365247 it was double the price with no extra value or real justification to support it. The price hike should come out of GamePass if anything as that is where all the value is. If your Netflix subscription doubled in price you would want to know why. For those of us who have gamepass it is easy to dismiss this because of the value we get.

@Alpha_Pulse
So let me ask you was the 5 games we got for February worth the price hike? Since the price hike aint happening should Xbox drop one game off the list? That one game being Gears 5 since its aready on gamepass

@Gaming365247 I'm actually impressed by the amount of ignorance you expressed in just a few short paragraphs.

You implied only rich people should be able to play video games. You ignored the fact that the game industry profits are extremely healthy. You missed the fact that partly due to covid there is a large rise in unemployment and poverty. You missed the fact that the cost of living is outpacing income/spending power. You missed the fact that something like healthcare is aboslutely essential to someone's quality of life and ability to contribute to society and people should absolutely be upset if (when speaking about the US) its already overbloated cost is further increased.

and why have you made this argument?, because you wanted to give a multibillion dollar company more of your money? Why are you so angry at people for getting something that is actually to your benefit?

@Alpha_Pulse @Richnj
Why you get mad at price hikes. Do you get mad at price hikes in other things in life ? If so maybe save more money, get a different job or better yet go somewhere cheaper. If Xbox, Sony or Nintendo wanna raise prices so be it ($70 exclusive games easy solution wait till cheaper see Godfall under $40 in two weeks...) $120 Gold per year easy buy when on sale or use MS reward points...) i'm just saying theres other things in life to complain about then the cost of gaming.

@Gaming365247

"Do you get mad at price hikes in others things in life?"

Yes, see above.

"Save more money, get a different job or better yet go somewhere cheaper?"

During a time when people are losing their jobs, because places are shutting down or cutting back, you want everyone to go get better jobs?. Also, go where?. YOu want me to pack up and leave my settled roots, leave all the family I have here, distrupt my child's live even more than it already has? and go somewhere cheaper?. This is Ben "sell your underwater homes and move" Shapiro levels of ignorance.

"Why do you get mad at price hikes?"

I'll repeat myself again I guess. The cost of living is ever increasing and outpacing income. Which creates poverty. Which creates depressive soceities, and hurts people mentally, emotionally and physically.

I'd be ok with price hikes if wages also saw the same kind of boosts, but they don't, and haven't done so in decades.

@Bmartin001
Phil Spencer is head of Xbox, so I imagine he had some say in the matter.
I just think they've probably seen the stats of people still only on Gold compared to Ultimate and probably saw the price hike as an easy way to move them over in terms of value for money.
Sounds like the actual F2P games thing was probably already planned to be announced in a few months anyway, but the backtrack forced their hand.

Personally I couldn’t see why so many were bitching about the price increase? Surely most would be on GPU by now? Although I don’t know how the decision would have impacted Xbox 360 owners.
Still they have gone back on the decision (most companies wouldn’t) and on top of that given you a freebie, pretty damn good IMO.
Still people will still complain even with the backtrack and free gift. For those I say go away and move to PlayStation then where you can spend $70 a game, or in Europe the equivalent of $90 a game...

@Bmartin001 is Phil your best friend or something? He doesn't care about you.

He's sorry because it didn't work. That is all. Its a balance between charging high as possible versus pricing themselves too high.
They are a business out to make as much money as possible and have no care for what people think unless it affects them financially - as in this case.

This guy just comes across as unbelievably ingenuine to me - and that annoys me. Not the price rise - which ALL companies do - but the fake concern that we were unhappy with it. Their only concern is potentially losing paying customers. MS revenue is beyond ridiculous - they don't need to hike the price up - proven by the fact they haven't anymore. Its just business.

If I knew everyone here would buy my product for more money, then go on forums to defend me for it - I'd do it! If everyone screamed and ranted, I'd reverse it and apologise about how I didn't mean to cause angst. I certainly wouldn't say what he is really thinking..."damn..we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling keyboard warriors!"

If you are increasing the price you do so incrementally over time so people don't kick up a fuss. A dollar a month wouldn't be that bad or 5 for the 6 months would have been reasonable and then next year another increase. It doesn't take an expert to understand that.

It's okay Phil, we still appreciate you. Only this time, ACTUALLY learn from your mistakes, BEFORE making new ones, please...

"Hope your Friday is now a little bit better"

It most definitely is, Mr. Hryb, it most definitely is...

@S1ayeR74 gamepass is on 20m already.

That is almost half of the xbox one sold. We have to consider pc gamepass tho. If only they showed numbers, because if out of the 20m, 15m are from... You can expect where ms is heading.

@StonyKL Your so very very very wrong. The Xbox decision is a HELL of a lot more consumer friendly then many other US electronics giants. Go and look at what Apple does... and it’s history with how it treats its customers.

@LiterallyDoNotCare That’s true seeing the numbers would be good, still, doesn’t detract away from the fact GPU is probably one of the best value services in gaming for years. Costs go up though so they have to increase service costs to cover it. Still they could increase it by a quarter or a third.

@S1ayeR74 it is, but not everyone benefits from it. Even less as I believe the value will increase as soon those bethesda games come out

That’s great, now let’s get drug and insurance companies and hospitals in America to follow Microsoft’s example and do the same.

Pretty lame to try to hike up the price, won’t be surprised if Microsoft tries this again. Or any other company for that matter.

'learning opportunity' what did they learn ? That they couldn't f*** over their customers without backlash...

@Gaming365247 as I said I have GPU so I am unaffected but I still feel for those that are. You are twisting what a lot of people are saying here. Nobody has a problem with price hikes depending on the current climate. This is double the price for the same service. In fact it would have made more sense to discontinue the service.

What you are saying here is that people should accept price hikes without question which is only the kind of behaviour an idiot would exhibit. If MS decided to double the price of gamepass for the same level of service would you simply pay up? No you would want to know why the price was increasing. The cost of development has not doubled in the last 12 months and the cost of their current gold operating model has certainly not changed.

It's not about well paid jobs or anything like that. I am one of the fortunate people who has a very well paid job but doesn't mean I would just accept an increase in prices of that magnitude without question. You are also assuming that by pointing out that this price hike isn't justified that I assume all price hikes are not justified.

I didn't realise people had this level of ignorance to the world around them so thank you for teaching me something new today.

@shonenjump86 They will but hopefully they won't try to double it out of nowhere. And the whole pay to play online is stupid and should go away anyway.

I think the intention was to bring the gold price point up to game pass. They just pulled the pin on the grenade and let it go rarther that a slow approach. I don’t mind paying a small increase however at twice the price that would have ended my 18 years on the platform. I am pleased they backed away from this call. I think in the future they could increase this price but add value to gold or drop it and lower the game pass price and meet somewhere in the middle that would be a better package

Quite laughable tbh

@Gaming365247 you must work for big phill and kiss his ass everyday

@sandman89
And you must be fun outside gaming complaining about the high cost of everything else

This is precisely why i want xbox to fail. They'll be a worse Sony then Sony should they "win"at any point. That the business elements are pushing this junk and then have to backtrack when it predictably blows up tells us what they really what to operate as.

Sony would have stuck to their guns and declared oh well, if you don't like paying more, you can leave. Because they can, because they own the market. Microsoft has to back down only because their losing. Let's hope they lose forever.

This was a disaster move that was obvious from the start.

Back tracking will also keep Sony in line.

Ugh, i really hate all these companies. I miss when gaming was small.

@NEStalgia Back when it was only Nintendo making Mario games?

@BrilliantBill Memories of when Nintendo was the only game in town should be reason for anyone to side with the underdog, whichever side may be the underdog at any given time. That was a nasty time. Great games....but nasty business.

@NEStalgia In a funny way we are in similar times. Since 2013 up to now Sony has dominated what I call "Fancy gaming" market 100%. By fancy I mean anything outside the type of games Nintendo makes. the sort of high-polish, cinematic and high-fidelity games. Unfortunately Series consoles have also so far failed to turn the page or anything.