Back in the spring of 2025, an interesting debate sprang up on Reddit. A poster suggested that gaming costs were out of control, arguing that digital games should be shielded from elements that traditionally impact inflation, such as supply-chain costs. The original poster was, as is common on Reddit, torn to shreds, with many pointing out that, yes, inflation does impact digital products. Yet, there was also a consensus among the posts that gaming costs are spiraling out of control, and inflation is only part of the story.
On October 1st, 2025, Xbox announced it was increasing the price of its Game Pass Ultimate from $19.99 per month to $29.99 – a 50% rise – so we wonder what those Redditors would make of that today. It comes on the back of Xbox’s announcement to raise console prices in September 2025, adding approximately $50 to the cost of a console. In August 2025, Sony also added $50 to the price of a PS5, going from $499 to $549 for the standard edition.
Plenty of free and cheap gaming entertainment
Of course, not all gamers use consoles, subscriptions, or play AAA games, and there are plenty of cheap – even free – experiences on your PC online or on mobile, ranging from the thousands of titles on Addicting Games to the popular slot games online at McLuck to game streaming experiments like those you find on Netflix. Yet, if prices are rising among the blue-chip companies, you can gather that there are at the very least pressures to raise them elsewhere.
But how bad is it really? If you consider that the PS5 was released in 2020, costing $499 at the time, and the recent rise (the only one made by Sony so far) was $50, that means it has risen by 10%. If we look at inflation in the United States since 2020, it is somewhere in the region of 15%-25% (depending on the measurement). Nevertheless, you can make a counterargument here: Companies like Sony have actually shielded gamers from inflation by “only” raising prices by 10%. That said, you might argue that technology products tend to drop in price as they get older, not increase.
The impact of tariffs may not yet be known
There’s also the question of tariffs from the US government. This is not an easy subject to parse out, not least due to the fact that the Trump Administration has changed course several times, depending on the country it is targeting. Companies also react to tariffs in different ways. For example, Sony raised prices in the UK and Europe before it raised prices in the US, and many experts believed this tactic was more about sharing the load, i.e., raising revenues elsewhere to shield from any tariff impact. Nonetheless, tariffs can take a while to hit the real economy, so we might have to wait a little longer to see if there is additional fallout.
None of this will be of any consolation to a gamer feeling the pinch of costs. Even if we are technically being protected from ‘some’ elements of inflation, it is clear that gaming is broadly more expensive. Indeed, there is some evidence that the cost of producing a AAA game has ballooned by more than 1000% since the 2000s, with some budgets now commonly found to be in the nine-figure bracket. And if a developer is throwing two or three hundred million at a game, it is going to look for ways to recoup that outlay.
Now, though, experts are increasingly pointing to a paradox in game development. Costs – we are told – are rising as many studios simultaneously shed staff. We could provide an entire treatise on the impact of AI on video game development (the good and bad of it), but it’s enough to say that, for now, AI tools are taking on some of the labor that would have previously been performed by humans. Technically, though, AI should make game development cheaper, although it might take a while until that starts filtering through to the market at large.
In the end, the association with rising costs will depend on your personal circumstances. There are plenty of gamers out there having a whale of a time while never touching – or paying for – consoles and AAA games. Others may focus on a single title, whereas others may simply be able to shrug off any prize rises. But gaming does seem to be in a category with every other form of entertainment that, when prices go up, it feels a bit unfair.
