Microsoft has announced significant price rises for Xbox consoles, blaming the ongoing “components crisis.”
Xbox console price rises June 2026:
Xbox Series S 512GB: $399.99 ---> $499.99
Xbox Series S 1TB: $449.99 ---> $599.99
Xbox Series X 1TB Digital: $599.99 ---> $749.99
Xbox Series X 1TB: $649.99 ---> $799.99
What’s even the use case for Xbox right now? People with a PS5 or Switch won’t switch and money’s way too tight to buy another system. People with functional gaming PCs don’t need an Xbox.
So are they hoping there’s just a bunch of non-gamers out there that are right now looking for an excuse to spend $500+ to get started?
I saw some refurbished Series S models on their site for ~$330 and that is a good entry point for a “gamepass machine” but there can’t be that many in stock. $500 for a Series S that isn’t even guaranteed to run the latest and greatest just seems too high.
Kinda shows how the steam machine price really is just due to the market. If Microsoft is selling a console at $750/800 then the $1050 for the steam machine isn’t too far off.
And people keep paying.
Someday people will say enough is enough.
That day is not today. Tomorrow doesn’t look good, either.
Microsoft has announced significant price rises for Xbox consoles, blaming the ongoing “components crisis.”
THE COMPONENT CRISIS THAT THEY CAUSED?!
Yes, this will surely help the Xbox brand come back from the brink of irrelevancy! /s
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/06/25/xbox-console-price-update/
Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027.
please make it stop
“Sorry I didn’t hear you, did you say make it slop? Say no more chief!”
We need to burn down the corporate HQs of OpenAI and Anthropic for that.
This is exactly the breath of fresh air that the Xbox needs.
They’re trailing far behind their competitors, and now, they’re going to push up the price on their 7 year old console.
Magnifique!
it’s this the first time I’m modern history that old products get more expensive?
definitely not a good sign
For computer hardware, it’s uncommon to see major increases — computer hardware has consistently seen dramatic long-term declines — but it does happen. The other major incident I can think of was 15 years back:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Thailand_floods
Severe flooding occurred during the 2011 monsoon season in Thailand. The flooding began at the end of July triggered by the landfall of Tropical Storm Nock-ten.
Thailand is the world’s second-largest producer of hard disk drives, supplying approximately 25 percent of the world’s production.[76] Many of the factories that made hard disk drives were flooded, including Western Digital’s, leading some industry analysts to predict future worldwide shortages of hard disk drives.[77][78] Western Digital was able to get one of their plants, flooded on 15 October 2011, restored and operating on 30 November 2011…As a result, most hard disk drive prices almost doubled globally, which took approximately two years to recover.[77][80]
EDIT: Oh, right, and the cryptocurrency thing drove up some GPU prices for a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPU_mining
As cryptocurrency miners increased their purchases of GPUs between 2013 and 2017, the prices of GPUs skyrocketed.[7] The increasing demand of GPU mining and purchases caused a worldwide shortage that continued into 2021 until production finally caught up in 2023.[8][9]
I think that it was more ASICs outperforming GPUs that wound up killing that off.
Forgot about crypto GPU thing.
Definitely a sign that something is wrong
I mean, what are you calling modern history? Lots of vintage games are more expensive now than at release.
I think they mean products that are not new to the market, but are still actively manufactured.
Ah that wasn’t clear to me. I can’t remember any consumer electronics getting more expensive while still in production in my lifetime, although if we expand out to other product categories it’s happening all over the past decade or so. Inflation combined with shrinkflation has been making pretty much everything worse value.
Remember $5 footlongs, 5 for $5 at Arby’s, or the 10 for $10 packs at Taco Bell?
LOL right after wailing that gaming was becoming unaffordable?! no way!!!
wanted to say this. If they were that concerned about gaming becoming unaffordable, they should have tried to keep the cost of hardware lower, not going with the insane market prices.
Alongside the price rise announcement, Microsoft pointed to Buy Now, Pay Later options that break up your payments, as well as interest free financing. It’s also working with retailers to make second-hand consoles available at lower prices, it said.
In all seriousness, if you can’t come up with the cost of a console, do not buy it (a) using an unsecured loan (b) in the middle of a short period of time where you know that the price is elevated. If things are that tight, then that’s just a terrible use of money.
Buy now pay later is predatory because it encourages overspending.
Cool, I’ll adjust the number of Xboxen I’m buying by the same percentage.
0 * ~0.8 = 0
Jokes aside, the old prices weren’t close to a compelling proposition. These consoles have been out for ages and I still haven’t seen much in the way of reasons to buy in. I love my 360, had lots of fun with my Xbox One X, and even the original Xbox had some good stuff (I loved Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Sid Meier’s Pirates, Crimson Skies, Splinter Cell, XIII, and various others). I’m still waiting on why I should give the slightest shit about the Xbox Series X/S and they’re rapidly running out of road.
I think this is the third price increase on Xbox since the start of 2025…? Insane. Absolutely insane.
wow that’s bad, Apple also increased prices a lot today https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/25/apple-just-increased-prices/
I guess it’s due to Micron’s new lock-in https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/06/25/micron-locks-in-historically-high-memory-prices-for-five-years/5261854
