Why a company that puts Empathy at center of everything they do ignores regional pricing of...

I have believed till now that Microsoft champions in the field of pricing its digital products reasonable to the markets it caters to. A digital product has no inherent cost of duplicity or multiplicity (2 or 20 will cost the same , just as copy -pasting a file doesn't double its value). And so we are not talking about pricing keeping in mind BEP (Break Even Point) and sustenance.

Over the decade, popular game store Steam has ensured that a fair pricing policy is developed so that the digital purchasing power equity is ensured. It is a moral and social aspect of the business that probably big companies like Microsoft should be proud of upholding.

Steam's suggested regional pricing guidelines are developed based on numerous studies and findings of socio-economic macro factors of all the countries and putting a list where they compare how a 60 USD game is equivalent to purchasing power of someone residing in say countries like Bangladesh, India, Vietnam or Turkey, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico etc.

With that in mind, a 60 USD game is sold in regional currencies of these countries at a price that when converted to USD, may amount to 20 to 30 USD. This is the standard of industry not just Gaming, but every digital product industry. For example, Spotify monthly subscription costs way less in India compared to same subscription in Europe. Same is with Netflix, Amazon Prime.

Even Microsoft owned Gaming Studios have ensured they follow the regional pricing to the closest for many of their games. Psychonauts 2 is the latest example. On the third party Steam tracking website, we see that the game has followed Steam Suggested pricing for many countries barring 8 currencies where it has priced it at a hike of more than 50 %.
https://steamdb.info/sub/160659/



Same goes with

Forza Horizon 4 https://steamdb.info/sub/451350/

Sea of thieves https://steamdb.info/sub/401467/

However, with their latest game Forza Horizon 5, Microsoft, the company that puts empathy at the center of everything they do, and company that vouches for a contribution of their income on social welfare initiatives, priced their digital product at 2 to 4.5 times the price than the fair regional pricing policies in 16 regions and/or countries.

Here's the link to tracking for reference https://steamdb.info/sub/547831/

As can be seen, except 2 regions, the US and South Korea, both first world rich countries, it priced the game Above the fair regional pricing policies. Not only that, it is selling Forza Horizon 5 at a cheaper price to FH4 in many European countries. While talking about pricing in Windows store, they are even higher than the steam prices, leaving no hope to be able to buy there.

So if its put in simple terms, Microsoft is selling their product at fair prices in Affluent countries, both on steam and windows store, while selling them as a luxury and unaffordable product in less affluent countries, both on steam and strongly so on windows store.

This is something that goes literally contradictory to the empathy vision of the company and the socially responsible nature of its business. I believe this is something that the highest of high authorities should look into and rethink. This is something that affects many people like me who would love to see Microsoft being a champion of fair and equity in the digital world that we are all part of and in which Microsoft and its products are a big contributor and have been trailblazer for many years.

I dont know if this was the right forum, but I really wanted to share my views on this thing with someone from the Microsoft responsible for it. I tried to find contact us button on Playground games, but i couldn't find any. And this forum is like a known space and So i thought let me share my concern here.

thank you.

:)