Trump puts tariffs on Americans and then companies use this as an excuse to raise prices worldwide
Good luck selling a "Xbox one series x pro plus elite series s" for €600
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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If your competitor is forced to raise prices 10%, why wouldn't you raise prices 8/9/10%?
Anyone that's taken an AP history class knew tariffs don't work to help the economy — it's a tax on all of us and only raises all prices.
You might not buy a €600 Xbox when the Switch is €250, but it looks more attractive when the Swich is €470
zero competitors are forced to raise prices 10% in europe, though
it's a console launched 5 years ago with no new revision, it was unattractive for €500 in 2020 and it's even more unattractive for €600 in 2025, if they want to move more units they should lower the prices, not increase them. With this price people can get a real PC with better performance, where you don't need to pay a subscription to play online. And there are no cool "must have" exclusives like the ps5 or the switch, so the premium is not justified.
This depends on the markets. For example, if prices in the US raised 50% due to Tariffs, then they might lose one of their largest markets, but if they can raise them 10% globally, then they can potentially limit that loss and still have a chance (as much as possible anyway) in all of their markets.
Either way, they need to raise prices because their costs have gone up. It's a question of where that money is coming from, and how they can reduce its impact on them as much as possible.
There’s about a zero percent chance that 5 year old console components cost more today than they did 5 years ago.
Things like that don’t get more expensive, they get cheaper as new tech develops.
When you tariff them by over 100% of their value, they tend to cost more to import.
My whole comment was on the tariffs specifically, and there is a 100% chance they affect sales in the US. Even with cost reductions in manufacturing over the total lifetime of the console, there's no chance they cut costs enough to keep up with the tariffs, and there is no chance they planned for the tariffs to be this high in their planning.
Outside the US? These tariffs aren't applied, but raising the prices globally limits the impact of them on one of their largest markets since they can amortize the cost across all their markets instead of just one.
Yes and no. Most of the cost-reductions in hardware manufacturing lifecycles come from minimizing materials loss and optimizing design efficiency. The components don't actually just get cheaper to produce over time on their own, from a material perspective. That means that material shortages are much more likely to have a big impact on cost (up or down) than new manufacturing technology, for the same chip.
Tbf, Microsoft is an American company that is probably looking for ways to address their own rising expenses. Japan is struggling economically as well, so I imagine Ninty & Sony are looking at international markets to offset their own struggles as well.
One thing that should be noted is Nintendo is roughly the 10th best company in Japan and has billions in reserve cash.
Their games almost never go on sale and the switch 2 has set off the $80 trend. Nintendo was already expensive, no reason to believe they aren’t going to keep themselves from being more expensive despite the billions.
Oh sorry, I wasn't defending them. Haha yeah I agree with you completely. They are absolutely going to jack up costs. I just meant I don't think Nintendo is generally struggling. They seem like a standout in the market
‘If we have to suffer, you have to suffer. We don’t need to be told we’re the best we the best we just are. The numbers prove it. Look at those numbers, highest they’ve ever been, it’s beautiful. Joe Biden could never have gotten numbers this high. Kamala and Hillary wanted to but we didn’t invite to the new island so they missed the party.’
Nice. Hopefully this means I can get a bit more selling my series x and I can put the money towards better parts for my pc. Thanks MS
You can replace those consoles with a mini pc running linux or steam os pretty damn easily.
Do you guys think these companies will retroactively raise game prices for older titles?
There's a couple of Nintendo games that never go on sale that I've been waiting on. I have a gift card, so I'm thinking maybe I should snag em now before things get stupid expensive
I don't think they'll do that for already-released games, but I wouldn't put the big 3 (Sony, MS, Nintendon't) from doing the barest 'remasters', and replacing their digital versions of those games with the 'remasters'.
Ahh, that's something I didn't consider. EA did that recently with the Sims 1&2. Something like that at least. I hate that. At the very least, both options should be available.
In the case with the Sims, they didn't include regional variants of the game, and they also were missing an ikea dlc due to licensing
looks at my steam deck
.....yeeeeah
For real though, I'm so glad I got out of consoles haha.
Same, although I use the SD as a console, lol....
I had the original Xbox all the way through the last series and sold it to get the last 100€. I hadn't bought a game on the Xbox since No Man's Sky and just didn't see anything appealing about it anymore, it was just a steaming box until it was gone (and is at a friend's, who is using it as a streaming box, lol)