The video game industry has announced major price increases in the U.S. and globally in response to the current tariff wars initiated by the Trump Administration, with the major consoles announcing price rises as high as $100 in the last month, and Playstation and Xbox also raising the price of individual games to $80.
The price rises accompany a massive purge in the industry, with thousands of layoffs in the last year, coupled with the complete shuttering of studios. This is all transpiring as video game performers are set to enter the tenth month of their ongoing strike against the conglomerates.
The Nintendo Switch 2 console, set to release this summer, delayed pre-orders for the system in order to assess the impact of both the paused tariffs and the ones currently in place against China. They claim that the $449.99 price tag, a sizeable jump from the $299 for the original Switch, will not be raised further, but that accessories for the new console would see adjustments upward. The company has already shipped hundreds of thousands of units to the US in anticipation of the tariffs.
Xbox manufacturer Microsoft announced last week that it would be raising the price of the Xbox by $80, from $299.99 to $379.99, while also raising the Xbox series X to $599.99, up $100. In its announcement, it also announced price increases in the UK, EU and Australia, and stated that further announcements would follow on price rises in the rest of the world. Microsoft also indicated that individual game prices would be hiked before the Christmas shopping season, and added that accessories such as headsets and controllers would also see price increases.
The announcements by Microsoft followed statements from Sony the previous month that it was going to raise the recommended retail price of the Playstation 5 by $100 in the US, as well as making price hikes in the EU, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
While blaming tariffs, the major players in the industry continue to make money hand over fist. According to the latest quarterly earnings report from Microsoft, the company made $70.07 billion in revenue, with a net income of $25.8 billion. This included a 6 percent increase in their personal computing unit which includes laptops and Xbox.
The rise in prices is just one aspect of the changing state of the industry, with studios closing, some only days after releasing new games, while others are not even staying open until finished games are released to the public.
Just since December, a partial list of the gaming studios that have been shut down include: Monolith Productions, Freejam, Counterplay Games, Toadman Interactive and Fizbin, Midnight Society, Mountaintop Studios, Player First, Volition, Ready at Dawn, London Studio and Pixelopus Games.
The closing of studios has been coupled with continuing layoffs at studios that remain open. Microsoft has announced an undisclosed number of workers being laid off, mostly concentrated at its Xbox division, with more reportedly to come later in May. This would make 6 rounds of layoffs at Microsoft in the past year alone.
Electronic Arts announced on May 1st layoffs of between 300 and 400 people, with 100 of them at Respawn, a major studio responsible for the popular Apex Legends, Titanfall and Star Wars Jedi series. The layoffs followed the announcement of the cancellation of the Titanfall series, and are the third round of layoffs at EA in the past year.
Role-playing game studio Bioware Studios announced the layoff of 20 workers with the announcement that it would not “require support from the full studio” on the next game in the series.
A report just released by the Game Developers Conference, which surveyed 3,000 game developers, mostly from the US, stated, “the top reason companies have given their employees for layoffs is restructuring, followed by declining revenue and market shifts.”
The reported added: “That’s for those who even got an explanation: 19% of developers told us there was “no reason given” for any of their company’s layoffs.”
As all this is transpiring, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) continues to strangle the strike of video game performers, which is set to enter its tenth month in 3 more weeks. There have been only a handful of pickets, held for a few hours, only once every month this year.
At the same time, the bureaucracy continues to sign interim agreements behind the backs of workers. These agreements, which workers are not allowed to vote on, take workers off the strike and send them back to work, essentially making workers scab on their brothers and sisters still on strike. To date, the SAG-AFTRA bureaucracy has announced the signing of 180 such agreements.
On top of this, SAG-AFTRA has joined with other major unions in backing Trump’s right wing trade war policies, falsely presenting them as defending American jobs. In a statement, it declared the union “supports efforts to increase movie, television and streaming production in the United States. We will continue to advocate for policies that strengthen our competitive position, accelerate economic growth and create good middle class jobs for American workers.”
The global gaming industry is one of the most profitable. In 2024 the industry generated $184.3 billion in total revenue, an increase of 0.2 percent over the previous year.
This demonstrates the deliberate intention of the giant conglomerates to put the costs of the nationalist trade war squarely on the backs of workers and consumers. The same wealthy executives who financed and pledged allegiance to the would-be Fuhrer are using and will continue to use the tariff war as a means to continually restructure and downsize to maximize profits in an industry that already dwarfs that of all other entertainment industries combined.