The topic of increased pricing within the gaming sphere has become a hot topic as the years have gone on. With games themselves becoming more expensive, just the thought of spending even more money to update a PC with the latest parts or buy a new console is headache worthy. Gaming has now become an expensive hobby.
One company that has been transparent about the components crisis hitting the entire electronics industry is XBOX. CEO of XBOX and Microsoft Gaming Asha Sharma introduced the idea of a price hike and discussed the growing difficulties of manufacturing consoles in her Next 100 Days: XBOX Reset message released June 10th. Now, there has been an official update to the pricing of XBOX consoles.
As of August 1st 2026, consoles will cost US$100 more than they are currently priced at worldwide. This comes after the price change that just affected the United States last October, which was a $20-70 increase. Unfortunately, there is no end in sight for the upticks in price, as Sharma says the prices are expected to increase further as the years go on.
XBOX is attempting to mitigate this by offering multiple options for players to partake in to be able to buy their consoles. Options such as: Buy Now, Pay Later, Interest Free Financing, trading in, and purchasing refurbished consoles were proposed to make their products more “accessible”.
The XBOX team ensures that this was certainly a last choice, as they have spent months working with suppliers on a way to keep prices down to no avail.
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. Unlike phones, computers, speakers, and other consumer devices, consoles are typically not sold at a profit, but instead for less than they cost to make