Back in June, Microsoft was kind enough to give everyone a heads-up and warn them that Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X consoles would be increasing in price “worldwide” on August 1st. At that time, Microsoft revealed the prices that those in the United States would be expected to pay, but mysteriously didn’t mention just how much it would be jacking up the prices in the rest of the world.
Well, we now know why Microsoft omitted this information from its July warning, as the prices for the United Kingdom and Europe were officially revealed last night, and they’re not pretty.
As originally spotted by users over on ResetEra, Xbox Series S/X consoles have seen their prices increased by upwards of 40 percent in Europe. For instance, a 512GB Xbox Series S will now set you back either €499.99/£429.99–up from €349.99 and £299.99. That’s roughly equivalent to $580.
That’s not even the worst offender, however. That honor belongs to the Disc Drive version of the 1TB Xbox Series X, which will now set you back either €799.99 or £669.99, up from €599.99 and £499.99. That’s just over $900, and a whopping overall increase of $230.
When Microsoft announced price increases back in June, it justified the hikes by blaming the “current components crisis,” but suspiciously failed to mention the reason behind said crisis: “Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027. The entire consumer electronics industry is struggling with the current components crisis, but the effects are particularly hard on consoles.”
Perhaps, and call this an educated guess if you like, said component crisis may have been caused in part by the hundreds of billions of dollars that Microsoft has invested into building AI datacenters. But hey, that’s just a theory–either way, I highly doubt many people will be willing to spend just shy of a thousand dollars for a console that released almost six years ago.