Microsoft Admits It 'Messed Up' And Will No Longer Increase The Price Of Xbox Live Gold

A bit of a humiliating climb down that really didn’t need to happen in the first place. Microsoft have been pretty good about their pro-consumer policies over the past couple of years, but the price increase yesterday was reminiscent of their 2013 days.

Now they turned back with the decision and it will be free to play to f2p games. It sounds a bit like a commercial spot...

At least they listened and opted to completely reverse their decision. They could of been stubborn, sticking with their decision and maybe even reduced the price hike but still hiked the pricing - throwing a bone by making F2P games 'actually' free to play online as a way to offset 'any' price hikes.

Of course they messed up, but being able to admit it, apologise and reverse their decision is a good sign to me.

Xbox has been always suffered due to idiotic pricing decisions. In pervious generation, their decision to make Kinect mandatory and the rumor of being always online, single handedly buried the Xbox One. And now this. The console market is extremely competitive (especially in the early phase of the competition). One mistake (particularly pricing mistakes) results in loosing the competition. On the contrary, Sony has been always prudent regarding pricing decisions (except for PS3 pricing, which, they compensate by reducing the price and making online gaming free). We all remember how their decision to sell PS1 on 299$ knocked out the highly anticipated Sega Saturn.

@BAMozzy
Agree 100%.

What is going on at that Company?
Ok they reversed the decision, but to be so out of touch with the market and customers etc etc.
Microsoft Xbox wise seem to be for many years taking two steps forward and one step back with their internal decision making and crap that they come up with.
Perhaps their new strategy is any publicity is good publicity, as they say in the USA. DUMB ARSE.

They reversed their decision, this is only a good thing. The price hike was a bit nuts to begin with but at least they’ve listened and changed their mind, which is more than some other companies do.

@Dezzy70 they’re still a business and aren’t immune from making business like silly decisions driven by money. Sony has somehow gotten away with ridiculous price hikes on their first party games, they completely ignored the backlash and just went with it. That’s anti consumer.

At least Microsoft has listened here and changed their minds, that should be respected even if they tried to do a dumb thing to begin with.

Yes they are a business but recently they have taken good strides in improving their selfs to the gaming market, well done.
But sometimes they just don’t seem to think certain things through and do some damage to themselves, when being honest they really don’t need the damage. Hence the reverse decision and damage control that followed.
As for Sony, correct they make the decision like game price hikes and stick with it, along with the backlash and of course I don’t like their decision.
But they know, they will still sell bucket loads of PS5 and PS4 in certain countries.
Even though GODFALL is now about £37 at the shops and flopped bad really. I was hoping after GODFALL they might change their mind.
But Sony won’t they are a bit arrogant like that, they are same in the entertainment market with their be spoke low latency Dolby Vision decision.

Looks like they wanted to see the reaction and decided based on that.

Glad to see this. While no company is your friend Xbox has proven more competitive, and I honestly was not expecting them to 180 on this. I mostly play on PC but maybe I'll get some Gold. I would have been fine with an end to Games With Gold, but a price hike was an insane way to push Game Pass Ultimate.

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.

Wow, turning a terrible decision into a good decision. Credit where it's due for listening to the customers. 👍

Why do I get the feeling this whole thing was just one big PR stunt to make them look good and for people to sing them praises for listening to their fans

A very quick change of mind by Microsoft. A good result in the end, especially looking at the Games with Gold line up for next month...

Good to see that Xbox have reversed their decision. The backlash online & from fans really did help them change their minds. Because of all this now, I’m expecting game pass to go up in price, not soon tho, the backlash was relentless over their gold price increase. But again, very good move by Xbox to acknowledge their mistakes.

@UltimateOtaku91
Because you like conspiracy theories? It may well have been, but time will tell. Just like with CDPR who were the industry's saviour pre-Cyberpunk, they could do no wrong. Microsoft did well to reverse this decision and if they honestly were pushing for more money from Gold they will soon raise the price of GPU or some other service and reveal their true policy regarding pricing. Then you can say: I told you so.

A victory for players indeed. It was a bit... inconsiderate of Microsoft to try and do the price hike in the first place (particularly in current times) but I will praise them for listening and properly adjusting to the feedback given.

I admittedly don't have Xbox Live Gold at the moment and probably until I find the right game to tempt me online (DOA6 was sadly not it, but was hoped to be) but I'm glad to hear that the option is available to me in future.

when I complain on nintendolife about Nintendos practices I get shunned for being a troll when in fact Nintendo is by far my favourite console. I try to explain that by stating your frustration online Nintendo can at least see our thoughts and rethink their decisions. Im not saying that it was purexbox which got Microsoft to change but clearly they saw the frustration from the community and acted accordingly. Once again xbox will become my second console of this generation.

@Dezzy70 yesterday I almost caved and bought a Mclassic cable. Today im ready to buy a series s if I can find one.

Good move, but the smarter thing to do would have been not to change the price at all. Oh well, I'm not complaining.

@UltimateOtaku91 I don't think so. The 2013 drm affected them. At least I hope they at least know that. Now I wouldn't be surprise gamepass goes up in price because they didn't get away with this and now f2p are actually free.

I really want to see how their xgs games look already. See any indication that they are wasting a lot of money that made this decision to recoup money.

@sixrings
Good luck finding one.
Here in the UK we had stock drop of series x and s. Also Switch and PS5.
And every single console is sold out.
It’s crazy times.

Wauw, respect! 💚

I’ve got Xbox Game Pass on my Series X, but my son with his Series S doesn’t care for it and only wants to play his games with me and his friends online. That’s why this sub model still is an essential thing for a lot of people!

Great to see a company listening to their consumers and actually make a change fot the better, and making free to play games not needing gold is a great bonus.

Just goes to show that the fans have the true power and if enough people speak up and let there voices be heard these large corporations won't take of advantage of people..

@ChopperCampbell but their near immediate turnaround is reassurance they are definitely not back to their 2013 shenanigans.

Strange PR stunt 🤔

Wow, I didn't expect that, but definitely a pleasant surprise. Good on you, mr. Spencer (and team).

@sixrings Well, good thing you're not saying that, because it was definitely a LOT more sites and/or communities letting their voices be heard...

On an unrelated side note: I've personally never seen you as a troll or overly negative person on NLife. Just so you know.
However, criticism is only okay if it's constructive, and not if it's just complaining for the sake of it, so I'd say that dosing it is the way to go.

@Dezzy Very good point on how they would have gotten away with it if they had only increased the Game Pass price.

@UltimateOtaku91 nah. I'm sure they were going to hold on the f2p change until fall when halo infinite came out, but the backlash was so bad they knew just backledalling was not enogh. They had to offer a sign of good faith, so they threw this in now.

Simply roll back and you get still months of headlines simply about the stumble and them running back home with their tail between their legs.

On a side note, I got to say anyone that attempted to defend the price hike looks very silly right now.

Glad everyone spoke up, really happy with the Xbox community for not just bending over and taking it. But if MS is willing to make F2P games playable without Live then why not just make that the original announcement? Honestly this was so off key that I don't understand how it wasn't seen as the train wreck it was before it was released to the public. Now instead of being still seen as the company that puts it player's first it's a big reminder that they just want your money...but are at least open to admitting their mistakes.

Very poor decisions being made by someone higher up.

Xbox 180 🤣

It's a great thing when companies respond quickly, glad peoples voices were heard.

@uptownsoul it does. I have trouble remembering yesterday let alone what’s happened in the past 🤣 the Sony price hike was recent so that’s what I thought about.

@sixrings didn’t you have one before? An S that is?

@mousieone
ill admit I owned two series s and a series x. I sold them all when the money was right and I felt there wasn't anything immediate to play. My birthday is in April which is when I thought Id get my mom to buy one at her local pharmacy with her extra 20% off srs day discount. Shoppers drug mart is my friend. Really I only want a xbox because of its backward compatibility (I have old games) and to play with my nephew far away.

@sixrings that makes sense. By April there should be some stuff to plays The Medium comes out next week.

@Dezzy70 Sony TV's implemented the TV decoded style of Dolby Vision a few months back. Even my 2018 model got it with the built in player apps.

This is kind of embarrassing tbf. How many hours of meetings took place at Microsoft to decide to increase the price to then completely backtrack???

Either it's a PR stunt or there's some really incompetent management making decisions.

Personally I'd like to see the back of Gold and there only be one subscription with Game Pass and everything else rolled into one.

@Scenes
I did hear finally Sony got round to doing it
So that is good for all their TV users.
There was just no need for the 3 year wait when I think every other tv manufacture had tv decoded
In the first place.
What Sony did for 3 years was just confuse users
And you had to make sure the blu ray player you purchased decoded and work with their TVs.
Lucky most other manufacturers sent updates out for their blu ray players.
When I was young Sony and Pioneer were the tv kings, it’s amazing over the decades how two South Korean companies now hold the tv market and their TVs at the top end of the market are extremely good.

Microsoft and their 180’s!

Very pleased to read this today. Xbox must think were all rich.

Microsoft just showed their Xbox roadmap. GPU will be the eventual only offering, and it will cost more than $20 a month.

@__jamiie "either a PR stunt or there's really incompetent management."

It's as though you don't remember Windows ME, Windows Vista, or Windows 8.0 at all....

@NEStalgia Don't forget Zune! 😂

@__jamiie But I tried so hard to!

Did they think there wouldn't be pushback against such a drastic price hike?

This would be a ballsy move even if Microsoft was the market leader atm and enjoyed the sort of iron grip on the industry that Sony had early-to-mid last gen. To do this when they're trying to rebuild good will and compete more fiercely with Sony is... well... it's unfathomable.

A decision like this HAS to go through multiple layers of management first, right? Who takes an even cursory look at the industry as it is atm and decides that a move like this is anything other than self-destructive? Poor management doesn't even begin to describe it.

This doesn't even make sense as a PR stunt, since the proposal of the price change and the quick reversal of that decision simply makes them look incompetent.