Xbox Prices Soar $200 in a Year — Former Blizzard President Blasts Microsoft: "Not Tariffs, Just Profit"
Once again, consumers are stuck with the bill as companies shift the cost of their own missteps onto shoppers, critics warn.
Microsoft just raised Xbox console prices again, and former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra is not buying the explanation. If you were hoping the tariff boogeyman would take the blame, he says no — this is about profit.
What actually changed
- This is the second Xbox Series price bump in five months.
- Microsoft's priciest model, the Xbox Series X 2TB, now costs $799.99.
- At the start of the year, that same 2TB model was $599.99.
- Microsoft first raised it to roughly $730, and now it has climbed again to about $800.
Ybarra's take: not a tariff thing
When the first increase hit, Microsoft pointed to new U.S. tariffs and higher costs hitting hardware makers shipping into America. Ybarra says that explained the first jump — but not this one. He went straight at the logic on Twitter, arguing that what is being framed as a trade issue is really a margin problem.
"Console price increases are not tariff issues, they are profit issues. And the reason why profits are not where they should be is a far, far deeper issue vs. the tariff excuse."
"Tariffs went up once so that does justify the single price increase. An excuse to continue raising prices, with no new increase in tariffs, is simply a different problem and they are going to make consumers continue to pay for those problems."
The bigger picture at Xbox
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Xbox has had a rough stretch: four rounds of layoffs since the start of 2024, with thousands of jobs cut. The most recent wave in July also led to cancellations, including the planned Perfect Dark remake and Rare's mysterious survival project, Everwild. Whether you call that belt-tightening or course correction, it is not subtle.
And Ybarra has thoughts — lots of them
Since leaving Blizzard, Ybarra has been pretty quick on the draw whenever Xbox news breaks, weighing in on everything from consumer strategy to specific games like Oblivion Remastered. He is not exactly delicate about it either. On Call of Duty, for example, he warned that "CoD won't be lazy anymore" and predicted Battlefield 6 could hand Activision's shooter a beating, saying the franchise has "gone downhill for years."
So yeah, this latest price hike? In Ybarra's view, that is not geopolitics. That is a business trying to fix deeper problems — and passing the bill to the people buying the consoles.