This week, Senior Editor Tom Warren @ The Verge reported that the pricing of Xbox developer kits—console-like systems specifically designed for the creation of Xbox games—had seen a price increase of nearly 33%, taking the usual unit pricing from $1,500 USD to $2,000. The price increase closely reflects the tariffs imposed on China, driven by United States President Donald Trump’s unique fixation on import taxes since being sworn in late last year. Microsoft themselves comment that the price jump “reflects macroeconomic developments” in an announcement to Xbox developers, as mentioned in The Verge’s article.
The price increase of the Xbox dev kit follows a trend of adjustments across the board on console hardware and services, with the Xbox Series consoles seeing a hundred plus dollar increase (Microsoft also used similar “macroeconomic development” language in response to consumers on this) and Xbox Game Pass seeing a restructuring that hiked the service’s premium tier by 50% at 30 USD/23 GBP. Considering the launch pricing of the recently released ROG Xbox Ally’s price tiers and Xbox President Sarah Bond’s “premium” comments on future hardware, it appears to be becoming increasingly more and more expensive to be an Xbox player and a developer for the platform.
On the flip side though, it’s not as black and white as it appears. Agostino, the CCO of GSC Game World, who’s previous experience includes stints at Sega, Microsoft and Thunderful, shared a little more detail when responding to the news on Twitter.
I wonder whether people just don’t know or they willingly obfuscate facts to get clicks and engagement, since 2014 each ID@Xbox developer gets 2 free devkits. Xbox was the first platform to do this programmatically and at scale, albeit at PS before then we had a pool of kits we…
— Ago@GSC (@stiniuk) October 22, 2025
“I wonder whether people just don’t know or they willingly obfuscate facts to get clicks and engagement,” he wrote. “Since 2014 each ID@Xbox developer gets 2 free devkits. Xbox was the first platform to do this programmatically and at scale, albeit at PS before then we had a pool of kits we would give for free.
For most ID@Xbox developers, kits are indeed provided free of charge. So is this just a mountain out of a molehill? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
