A while ago, we published preliminary prices for our Xbox One servers. We stressed that those prices were subject to change. Turns out: We were right with that.

In short: The announced prices in USD have been reduced significantly, and slightly for other currencies. Scroll down for an overview of finalized prices. But if you like, stick around for the full story - including GIFs.

The Mistake

The reason we emphasized that those prices we announced were preliminary, was that the guys at Nitrado who are responsible for finances and accounting hadn't finally checked them. However, even though that was still due, we felt it was important to inform everyone about the current status, so that the surprise (increased prices due to the Microsoft store fee) didn't come at the moment people wanted to finally rent their servers.

But hey - who needs those guys from accounting, anyway? It's just: Take the price we show on our website, add the Microsoft store fee to that, and that's it! Right?

It turns out that things aren't that simple, and that much is to be considered when that many parties are involved: Nitrado providing the product, Microsoft selling the product, and the customer purchasing the product, all that spread across multiple continents. There is one topic in particular that blew up our whole, simplified calculation:

The mistake we (or rather I - the author of this article) made, was that we didn't account for the way American sales taxes work opposed to European ones. If you're not familiar: In Europe it is common (and mandatory) to always present the full price of a product to a customer, including all applicable taxes, specifically VAT - and there's VAT on pretty much anything. In the US, however, due to heavy variations in sales taxes between states and sometimes even cities, prices are shown and advertised excluding taxes, and those taxes are then applied during the checkout procedure. On top of that, in many cases products like our servers are even completely excluded from sales taxes.

This gets even weirder when selling products through Microsoft. If you tell Microsoft to charge 1 Euro, they will take 1 Euro including applicable taxes from the customer, subtract the Microsoft store fee, subtract the VAT that was included in that price, and then give you what's left.

However, if you tell Microsoft to charge 1 USD, they will charge 1 USD plus applicable taxes (and often there are no applicable taxes at all), subtract the Microsoft store fee from the 1 USD, and then give you what's left.

So basically, when we announced those prices in USD, we assumed a significant sales tax to be included, which, of course, doesn't apply there. And when I presented my calculation and the prices we had announced to accounting, their reaction was pretty much this:

So yeah, that didn't go too well. But gladly there was still time to make adjustments.

Scraping off a little more

On top of the tax massacre, we went through every single configuration and checked if and where we still had some room. We felt like the Microsoft Store fee especially hit small server communities of just a few friends, and we are happy that we were able to slightly reduce prices for our minimum configuration of 10 slots - this time for all currencies. We were also able to adjust the price of another popular configuration at 50 slots.

Finalized Prices

Here are the prices you've been waiting for. All prices are for ARK servers for Xbox One, sold through our Microsoft Store app:

USD (plus applicable taxes) EUR (including taxes) GBP (including taxes) CAD (plus applicable taxes) 10 Slots, 30 Days 13.99 13.99 11.74 17.99 20 Slots, 30 Days 21.99 21.99 18.49 27.99 32 Slots, 30 Days 34.99 34.99 29.24 44.99 50 Slots, 30 Days 53.99 53.99 44.99 69.99 70 Slots, 30 Days 74.49 74.49 61.99 95.99 100 Slots, 30 Days 98.49 98.49 82.49 126.99

USD (plus applicable taxes) EUR (including taxes) GBP (including taxes) CAD (plus applicable taxes) 10 Slots, 90 Days 37.99 37.99 31.74 48.99 20 Slots, 90 Days 59.49 59.49 49.74 76.99 32 Slots, 90 Days 94.49 94.49 78.99 121.99 50 Slots, 90 Days 145.99 145.99 119.99 187.99 70 Slots, 90 Days 199.99 199.99 164.99 257.99 100 Slots, 90 Days 269.99 269.99 224.99 349.99

As mentioned before, in many cases "plus applicable taxes" still means that this is the final price sale price, as there often are no applicable taxes.

The Moral of the Story?

Well: Don't announce prices until you're absolutely sure. We wanted to inform the community as quickly as possible, like we usually do - however, this time this meant we were publishing inaccurate information at first.

We have caused some confusion with our initial announcement, and frankly, we also made a few people upset. We (and I, specifically) want to apologize for that.

You do still love us though, don't you?

Moving Forward

Now that that's out of the way, there's just one question left to answer: When?

Update: Because there was an issue during Microsoft's certification of the client-side update needed to play on our servers, the release of rented servers for ARK on Xbox One has been postponed to early November by Studio Wildcard. Follow us on social media to always receive the latest information about this topic.

We plan to release our Microsoft Store app and enable preorders some time between Wednesday, October 18th and Friday, October 20th. The reason we can't provide a more precise date is that we're still testing and polishing, and if we find something, we'll fix it before releasing the app. Either way, you will still have plenty of time to get your preorders in. We will then start delivering servers on October 25th, in the order we've received the preorders.

The app will be very easy to find: Just search for "Nitrado" in the store and you're good to go! You will need a Nitrado account to sign in, which you can either create within the app itself, or, if you want to be extra fast, right now here on our website.

Future Features

A lot of people asked us how server donations are going to work through the Microsoft Store, if someone wants to support the server they're playing on. We're currently working on a feature that we're calling "Server Boosting". That means you will be able to purchase small chunks of run time for an already running server you don't own yourself. This will make it easier to split the server costs among multiple people, if you and your friends should decide to do so.

This feature will not be available at launch on the 25th, but we plan to have it available before the first run time extensions are due.

Stay tuned!

To stay informed, keep an eye out on our social media channels, specifically Twitter and Facebook. We will do our very best to keep you posted with up-to-date info during preorders and launch of our ARK Xbox One servers.