The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has called Microsoft’s recent Xbox Game Pass price hike “consumer harm” and “product degradation”, citing this as the exact reason it initially fought against the approval of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
Microsoft recently bumped up the prices of Xbox Game Pass while introducing new tiers that now limit certain day one game drops on the service to the higher paid tiers, such as the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. The price increase has been heavily criticised online, especially in South Africa where it wasn’t exactly a slight increase. For example, a monthly Game Pass subscription now costs R199 (it was previously R129 per month). The new Standard tier will not include day one titles.
The FTC has clapped back against Microsoft for increasing the price of Xbox Game Pass, writing:
“Product degradation—removing the most valuable games from Microsoft’s new service—combined with price increases for existing users, is exactly the sort of consumer harm from the merger the FTC has alleged. Microsoft’s price increases and product degradation—combined with Microsoft’s reduced investments in output and product quality via employee layoffs, are the hallmarks of a firm exercising market power post-merger.”
The FTC also addressed Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 now being limited to the subscription service’s most expensive tier. “Microsoft’s price increases coincide with adding Call of Duty to Game Pass’s most expensive tier, and discontinuing the Console tier will happen shortly before releasing CoD’s newest game,” it wrote. “Microsoft promised that ‘the acquisition would benefit consumers by making [CoD] available on Microsoft’s Game Pass on the day it is released on console (with no price increase for the service based on the acquisition).’”
The response to the FTC’s appeal has been met with a mixed reception online. Some have taken the FTC’s side and called out Microsoft for not delivering on its promises – instead forcing players to now purchase more expensive tiers in order to receive day one titles – while others think it’s simply too little, too late as Microsoft can now make these decisions freely and offer more options for players.
Source: Video Games Chronicle