Microsoft backtracks on $80 games, The Outer Worlds 2 will be $70

Microsoft is backtracking on a shift to charging $80 for their games, with Obsidian confirming that The Outer Worlds 2 will now be priced at $70 – alright, fine, it’s technically $69.99 – when it launches this October.

Obsidian got to make the announcement in suitably silly fashion, given the franchise:

We have received your SOS via skip drone about the pricing. As an organization devoted to making sure that corporations do not go unfettered, we at the Earth Directorate have worked with [REDACTED] to revise the price of The Outer Worlds 2.

While this will not bring peace to the galaxy, or even your local colony, we assure you all that we are here to fight for all colonies in every way that we can.

From the Office of the Director of the Earth Directorate

In a statement to Windows Central, an Xbox spokesperson said, “We’re focused on bringing players incredible worlds to explore, and will keep our full priced holiday releases, including The Outer Worlds 2, at $69.99 – in line with current market conditions.”

Refunds for pre-orders will have to be requested manually, depending on the retailer, and the new pricing is rolling out today or tomorrow.

Those market conditions were probably everybody telling them that $80 for a new game sucks, both in the form of comments across social media and forums, and most likely in the form of the number of pre-orders that Microsoft were seeing. While The Outer Worlds 2 will launch on Game Pass for Xbox and PC, which naturally affects the number of people paying full price on console in particular, the higher price would be felt when looking at pre-orders across Steam and PlayStation 5.

Of course, this is bigger than just The Outer Worlds 2, and it was expected that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 would follow suit this year, before Fable, Gears of War E-Day and other major launches in 2026. Black Ops 7 pre-orders aren’t live yet, but if The Outer Worlds 2’s pre-orders were bad enough, there would have been some execs and accountants with a case of the nervous bouncy leg, especially when they already sacrificed a huge amount of day one revenue last year by putting Black Ops 6 on Game Pass.

We’ll have to wait and see if Microsoft is just delaying the price bump until January, or if they hold off a while longer.

Source: Obsidian, Windows Central