Xbox executive hints at in-game ads as the only way to stop 'dramatic' game prices following GTA 6

Grand Theft Auto 6, for all of its warranted glory, has set a scary precedent across the gaming industry.

Despite GTA 6 being set to become the greatest game ever released - at the very least, it will be the biggest - the price jump to $80 has raised the bar for others to follow. It is now justifiable that upcoming RPGs will say, 'if Rockstar can do it, so can we'.

And with so many huge projects in the works, such as The Elder Scrolls 6, The Witcher 4 and God of War: Laufey, it only puts more strain on the bank accounts of gamers like you and me.

Xbox executive Jonathan Stringfield has now claimed that there is a way that the publishers could cap game prices, though.

Yet, it's yet to be seen if it's the lesser of the two evils.

In-game ads could be Xbox's solution to capping game price inflation

Xbox has long been weighing up how to implement adverts into games, with reports dating back to 2022 of free-to-play games being the first recipients of this new revenue stream.

Most recently, the tech giants have been targeting ad-supported Cloud subscriptions, using the added ad money to supplement the expensive running costs of the online service.

Now, Xbox's Jonathon Stringfield has claimed that we could start seeing them enter mainstream games to combat increasing prices.

"Either of two things need to happen if we want to stick with the model as it exists today: We either need to dramatically increase the price of games, which I don’t think would be terribly popular with folks, or we need to find other mechanisms to allow access,” he said in an interview with GamesBeat.

“When we talk about advertising — and things that are adjacent to it that amount to recurrent revenue, whether it’s subscriptions or otherwise — what this allows for is an alternative."

“Where we want to have these integrated is places where it makes sense–where it can actually provide value in a positive way. Even if that means the total reach that we can have is going to be perhaps smaller than if we brute-forced it, that’s okay."

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But it won't be in every game.

"There is zero world where there is intention–written, explicit, implicit, or otherwise - that ads will be an option in all games," he added.

"It might not even be the case on all features of the console, et cetera."

"At no point is advertising compulsory — there are many different ways that you can access these things."

Previously under the advertisement-and-microtransaction-heavy conglomerate, Activision, Stringfield now operates as the General Manager for Xbox Media Solutions.

Xbox has been hot on pushing its portfolio of studio towards tighter deadlines, bringing Fable, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout and more to our screens soon. They might just serve as the testing ground for this new approach, in a bid to avoid a $80 per game tag.

It seems like a very black-or-black answer to rising prices, though.