Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has accused Microsoft of using tariffs as an excuse to justify repeated Xbox price hikes, arguing the increases are driven by profit rather than trade pressures.
Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has accused Xbox of using tariffs as “an excuse to continue raising prices”.
After Microsoft recently increased prices of its consoles due to “changes in the macroeconomic environment”, Ybarra argued the move was more of a “profit issue” than one related to the tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.
In a post on X, he wrote: “Console price increases are not tariff issues, they are profit issues. And the reason why profits are not where they should be is a far, far deeper issue vs. the tariff excuse.”
Over the past year, Microsoft has raised the price of its flagship Xbox consoles twice, with the second increase seeing the Xbox Series X jump by $50.
He wrote: “Tariffs went up once so that does justify the single price increase. An excuse to continue raising prices, with no new increase in tariffs, is simply a different problem and they are going to make consumers continue to pay for those problems.”
Ybarra also suggested Microsoft’s internal profitability challenges may be pushing the company to offload costs onto buyers.
In its latest earnings call, Microsoft reported revenue had seen an 18 per cent increase – with Xbox Game Pass making nearly $5 billion in annual revenue.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also pointed to the company’s focus on AI as one of the leading factors in the business’s seven per cent stock boost in July.
He during the earnings call: “Cloud and AI is the driving force of business transformation across every industry and sector.
“We’re innovating across the tech stack to help customers adapt and grow in this new era, and this year, Azure surpassed $75 billion in revenue, up 34 per cent, driven by growth across all workloads.”
Xbox using tariffs as ‘an excuse to continue raising prices’, ex Blizzard president says
