Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live (thanks The Verge), Spencer admitted, “We’ve held price on our console, we’ve held price on games and our subscription. I don’t think we’ll be able to do that forever… I do think at some point we’ll have to raise some prices on certain things, but going into this holiday we thought it was important to maintain the prices.” Earlier this year, of course, Sony announced it would be increasing the cost of PlayStation 5 in response to “high global inflation rates, as well as adverse currency trends”. At the time, Spencer said Xbox would not be following suit, explaining, “When our customers are more economically challenged and uncertain than ever, we don’t think it’s the right move.” Given Spencer’s latest comments, though, it’s unclear how long that might last. Elsewhere in his Tech Live chat, Spencer revealed some interesting tidbits about Xbox’s various services, including the news that Game Pass is now profitable, despite growth beginning to slow on consoles - a situation Spencer says is “mainly because at some point you’ve reached everybody on console that wants to subscribe”. While new console subscriptions maybe slowing, Game Pass on PC is said to be “seeing incredible growth”, and Game Pass as a whole now accounts for around 15 percent of Microsoft’s overall Xbox content and services revenue - a figure Spencer believes is likely to hold. “I don’t think it gets bigger than that,” he explained, “I think the overall revenue grows so 15 percent of a bigger number, but we don’t have this future where I think 50–70 percent of our revenue comes from subscriptions.” Spencer’s comments come a day after Microsoft revealed its Xbox hardware revenue has grown by 13 percent, making for the gaming division’s best ever Q1 results. A three percent fall in Xbox content and services revenue was said to have been “partially offset” by growth in Game Pass - with “more than 20 million people” now having used the service to stream games.
