Today’s Xbox Summer Game Fest showcase was a solid hour of big and small announcements, including a new Call of Duty trailer and the reveal of Xbox’s handheld PC device. But it also brought us our first $80 Xbox game.
The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian’s next big open-world RPG following this year’s excellent Avowed, kicked off Xbox’s showcase with a new trailer. And after the event, Xbox and Obsidian showed off even more of the upcoming space RPG sequel. It also opened up pre-orders, and that’s when people discovered that Outer Worlds 2 is $80.
While reactions to this news were mostly negative, it isn’t surprising. We knew Xbox was going to start charging $80 for games this year, as the company confirmed this was the plan in May. It announced last month that it was raising prices on all hardware and accessories, too. And it confirmed that by the holidays, some of its new first-party games will see a price jump from $70 to $80. Unfortunately for Outer Worlds 2 and developers Obsidian, the upcoming RPG is the first Xbox game to be priced at $80.
When Microsoft announced its plans to raise prices on games and consoles, it didn’t specify why. But it’s not hard to connect the dots. Xbox is raising prices due to President Trump’s ongoing tariff war against other countries. While it is true that prices for Xbox consoles and accessories are increasing all around the world, the difference is far greater in the U.S.
Of course, Xbox isn’t the first video game company to charge $80 for a video game. Nintendo famously broke the internet when it announced that Mario Kart World on Switch 2 was going to be priced at $80. And I’d bet my next lunch that GTA 6 will cost at least $80 when it arrives in May 2026.
It wasn’t that long ago that people were getting used to $70 games. And now that Xbox has finally made the leap, it’s only a matter of time until other companies start charging $80 as one of the most expensive hobbies around, gets even more costly.
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