Reactions have continued to trail the October 1, 2025, Xbox Game Pass price hike. The latest is coming from one of the Xbox founders, Laura Fryer, who used strong words like “greed over gaming”. Fryer was the producer for Too Human (2008) and Gears of War (2006).
Fryer recently released a YouTube video where she reacted to the 50% price hike of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. In the video, she called out the current leadership, alleging that they don’t understand “what makes Xbox great” and strongly doubted whether they understand what the community wants.
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“If you want to make a big change in your strategy, you gonna ask what it’s going to do to the business, what problem are you trying to solve?” Fryer said. “You shouldn’t remove the fence before you know why it’s there. And this is one of the challenges I think Xbox is facing right now.”
According to Fryer, it appears Xbox leadership has continued to double “down on decisions” that make it appear as if they are in a bubble where the “feedback doesn’t reach them anymore”.
“That yes man culture that took over in 2008 has only gotten worse, and this is the result, a crazy price increase for their fans after announcing that Game Pass had made $5 billion.”
Fryer, who was instrumental in the launch of the original Xbox console in 2001, said the current Xbox leadership has failed to maintain a stable content cost and forgotten “how to make games at scale”, which she believes is the cause of the recent layoffs and cancellations.
Fryer thinks the Xbox Game Pass price hike is a betrayal
The price hike “feels like a betrayal, like greed over gaming”, Fryer said. On the flip side, Fryer said it is also possible that the leadership no longer knows what they are doing and is just trying random things to see what works.
“It could also be that they’re just incompetent, that they just don’t understand what they’re doing and they’re trying things,” Fryer said.
“When I used to work at Xbox, I always found it amusing to hear what people outside the company thought about what we were doing. We were often painted as these supervillains. The reality was that we were just trying to figure things out. We had no idea what we were doing.”
There may be some element of truth to the experimentation allegation, considering the fact that Xbox has always been at the losing end of the console race compared to its two major competitors.
Also, Xbox’s current leaders have not been consistent with their messages. In a February update last year, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, announced four first-party titles that will be heading to rival platforms, calling it a one-off decision and that players should not expect more. Weeks later, he said no game was off limits.
Fast-forward to 2025, and more first-party titles have launched on rival platforms. Game Pass has been an experiment that has mostly worked for the company, considering the fact that it generated $5 billion (21%) of Xbox’s annual revenue in 2024.
Fryer believes the controversy surrounding Game Pass and recent price hikes of Xbox products will harm the brand and make it harder for the company to hire game developers.
“I believe all of these changes, and drama, will harm Microsoft’s brand as well. When we launched Xbox, Microsoft was not a beloved company. All that changed with Xbox. I can’t overstate Xbox’s impact on Microsoft’s public image. It made the company feel approachable, fun, and less serious.
“It sparked excitement across the organization. Amid recent controversies, that advantage is fading. When the source of your cool factor starts to seem greedy, it hurts your ability to attract and retain talent.”
Do you agree with Fryer’s opinion on Xbox Game Pass price hikes and the negative impacts the company will deal with in the future? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
