Xbox Series X Now Costs $300 More Than at Launch

When the Xbox Series X launched in November 2020, it cost $499.99. As of August 1, that same disc-drive console costs $799.99. Three hundred dollars more for the same hardware, six years into its lifecycle, at a point when every previous console generation was getting cheaper.

Microsoft confirmed the latest round of price hikes back in June, blaming what it called "the current components crisis" affecting consumer electronics. Memory and storage costs have reportedly jumped by more than 2.5x, according to VGC, and Microsoft expects another doubling by fall 2027. But the US numbers were only part of the picture. Now that the increases have gone live, European and UK pricing has been fully revealed, and it's worse than the US got. In the UK, the 1TB Series X disc model jumped from £499.99 to £669.99, a £170 increase. The 1TB Series S climbed from £349.99 to £519.99. Even the entry-level 512GB Series S went from £299.99 to £429.99. In Europe, 1TB models saw a flat €200 increase across the board, with the disc Series X now sitting at €799.99.

I wrote about the UK pricing specifically earlier today, and the full picture across all regions only reinforces how dire this looks. The Series S is now 50% more expensive than at launch. Microsoft has raised Xbox prices twice in the past year alone, and this comes after a quarter where Xbox content and services revenue dropped 10%, 3,200 layoffs hit the gaming division, and studios like Bethesda and id Software took significant cuts. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma recently outlined a four-pillar plan with hardware at its centre. Asking consumers to pay $800 for a six-year-old console while Sony and Nintendo are also hiking prices is a brutal foundation to build on.