It's getting more and more expensive to be a gamer these days, whether it's the rising cost of video games as a whole, or Valve trying to rip you off over $1,000 for a not-so-good computer. Everything goes up in price, and for one console maker in particular, it just doesn't seem to want to stop prices from going up in the slightest.
Xbox has been stomping on the rakes constantly ever since its grand Xbox showcase, shutting down Ninja Theory and laying off tons of talented developers, but this time it's set its sights on our wallets. Despite the fact that the price of consoles was raised in the United States already in October of last year, Xbox has announced that it must raise the price again, this time worldwide.
Xbox consoles are somehow getting even more expensive
Starting August 1st later this year, the prices of Xbox consoles worldwide will increase by at least $100. Xbox consoles with 512GB of memory will increase by $100, while 1TB consoles will increase by $150. It has also been announced that the 2TB consoles are being dropped entirely, presumably because they would be so expensive that even Xbox knows no one would buy them.
There is no good reason to buy an Xbox anymore
With another price hike, there are now even fewer reasons to buy an Xbox console.
As for why Xbox is raising the prices of its consoles for the second time in less than a year, it points to rising memory prices as the key factor:
“Last October, we raised the XBOX console price by $20-$70 in the US,” the statement said. “We hoped that another price increase would not be necessary, and we have spent the last few months working with suppliers on alternatives. Unfortunately, the prices of console storage and memory have increased by more than 2.5 times, and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027.”
That means that starting in August, the cheapest Xbox Series X you'll be able to buy at retail will be a console without a disc drive for a whopping $749.99, while the Xbox Series X with a disc drive will set you back $799.99. That makes the single-disc Xbox Series X $300 more expensive than when it launched in 2020, and it's a pretty grim indicator of exactly where this industry is headed.
- Stamp
-
Microsoft
- Original release date
-
November 10, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
-
$499 USD
- Operating system
-
Proprietary (Windows based)
- Processor
-
Custom AMD 8-core Zen 2 3.8 GHz
- Resolution
-
720p – 4K UHD
