Gaming

The Budget Xbox Took the Steepest Rise

Xbox prices rose across Europe on 1 August. The entry Series S went up 42.9 percent and the flagship Series X 33.3 percent, which is what a memory shock always does - it lands hardest on the cheapest machine.

GamingBy Servola Tech Desk2026-08-026 min read

AI-assisted, edited by humans. | Editor-in-Chief: Leon Soliman | Editorial standards

Key takeaways

Xbox console prices rose across Europe and the United Kingdom on 1 August, and the entry Series S went up 42.9 percent against 33.3 percent for the flagship Series X with a disc drive, so the cheap machine absorbed the larger share of the increase.
The 1TB Series S rose from 399.99 to 599.99 euros, almost exactly 50 percent, the steepest step in the range, while at the other end Microsoft discontinued the 2TB Series X outright - the range is being squeezed from both ends toward the middle.
Microsoft's stated reason is that console storage and memory prices have risen more than 2.5 times, with another doubling expected by autumn 2027, and it noted that consoles are typically sold for less than they cost to make, unlike phones and computers.
If you buy hardware in volume, stop defaulting to the entry configuration: in a component shock that is the model whose price moves most and the one most likely to be withdrawn, so specify one tier up or bring the purchase forward.

What changed on the shelf at the weekend

The prices Microsoft announced on 25 June took effect on 1 August, and a European buyer walking into a shop on Saturday found four new numbers. The 512GB Series S went from 349.99 to 499.99 euros. The 1TB Series S went from 399.99 to 599.99. The all-digital 1TB Series X went from 549.99 to 749.99, and the 1TB Series X with a disc drive went from 599.99 to 799.99. In the United Kingdom the same four machines moved from 299.99 to 429.99 pounds, from 349.99 to 519.99, from 449.99 to 619.99 and from 499.99 to 669.99.

Microsoft gave a straightforward reason. Console storage and memory prices, it said, have increased by more than 2.5 times, and it expects another doubling by the autumn of 2027. It also made a point that is easy to skip past: unlike phones, computers and speakers, consoles are typically not sold at a profit but for less than they cost to make. A machine sold below cost has no margin to absorb a component shock, which is why this one reached the shelf price almost undiluted. At the same time the 2TB Series X was discontinued permanently.

Read the percentages, because they are not the increases

The increases look uniform. In Europe they are 150 euros on the entry machine and 200 euros on the other three, which reads like a flat adjustment. The percentages tell a different story, and this arithmetic is ours, taken from the published prices rather than from anything Microsoft said.

In Europe the 512GB Series S rose 42.9 percent, the 1TB Series S rose 50.0 percent, the all-digital Series X rose 36.4 percent and the Series X with a disc drive rose 33.3 percent. In the United Kingdom the same four are 43.3, 48.6, 37.8 and 34.0 percent. Both currencies say the same thing: the Series S family took a materially bigger proportional increase than the Series X family, and the single steepest step in the whole range was the 1TB Series S at almost exactly half again.

The United States is worth checking against, because it points the same way but less sharply. There the four rises are 25.0, 33.3, 25.0 and 23.1 percent. The mid Series S is still the steepest and the flagship is still the shallowest, but the spread is about ten points where the European spread is about seventeen. Whatever else is happening, the pattern is not a rounding artefact of one market.

The euro sticker caught up with the dollar sticker

Line the new European prices up against the new American ones and something becomes obvious. The four new euro figures are 499.99, 599.99, 749.99 and 799.99. The four new dollar figures are 499.99, 599.99, 749.99 and 799.99. They are identical, digit for digit, across the whole range. Before 1 August they were not: every European price sat exactly 50 below its American counterpart. Europe did not just take an increase, it also gave up a gap it had held for the life of the generation.

One caution, because the comparison invites a wrong conclusion. European list prices include VAT and American ones do not, so matching stickers do not mean Europeans now pay more in real terms than Americans. At German VAT of 19 percent, a 499.99 euro sticker is about 420 euros before tax; the Spanish rate is 21 percent and the Italian 22, so the pre-tax figure differs by country. What the matching digits do show is that the entire nominal cushion Europe used to enjoy was closed in a single step, which is a decision about pricing policy rather than an automatic consequence of component costs.

A memory shock scales with silicon, not with price

The reason the cheap console moved most is not a pricing quirk, and it is worth understanding because it generalises well beyond consoles. When the cost of memory doubles, the increase a manufacturer must pass on is proportional to how much memory is in the box, not to what the box sells for. Memory and storage are a much larger share of the bill of materials in a 349.99 euro machine than in a 599.99 euro one, where the money is spread across a bigger processor, a better cooling system, a larger drive and an optical mechanism. The same component shock therefore represents a bigger fraction of the cheap machine's total cost, and the percentage on the shelf follows.

Notice what happened at the other end of the range at the same moment. The 2TB Series X, the model carrying the most storage, was withdrawn rather than repriced. Squeezing a range from both ends is the signature of a component shortage rather than a demand problem: the configuration with the most of the scarce part becomes unsellable at any sensible price, and the configuration with the least of everything else has nowhere to hide the increase. What survives is the middle, and it survives dearer.

The same shape is sitting in your hardware budget

Very few readers are buying consoles for a business, but almost everyone buying laptops, tablets, handhelds, kiosks, point-of-sale terminals or field devices is buying the same memory out of the same constrained supply. The standard procurement reflex is to take the entry configuration and buy it in volume, because per-unit price is the number that survives into the budget spreadsheet. In a memory shock that reflex points at exactly the wrong end of the range: the entry configuration is where the percentage increase concentrates, and the extreme configurations are where the discontinuations happen.

Two practical moves follow. If a refresh is already planned for the next twelve months, bring it forward rather than back, because Microsoft has publicly told you it expects another doubling of memory and storage prices by autumn 2027 and that is as clear a forward signal as a vendor gives. And when you specify, cost the tier above the entry model before you dismiss it, because the gap between them narrows every time this happens. One more date to keep in view: from 1 September the Nintendo Switch 2 rises to 499.99 euros, which is the same list price as the cheapest Xbox you can now buy. When a budget machine and a premium one meet at the same number, the budget tier has stopped existing in everything but name.

Frequently asked questions

Why did European prices rise more than American ones?

In percentage terms they did: 33 to 50 percent across the European range against 23 to 33 percent in the United States. Part of that is the closing of a nominal gap, since every European price previously sat 50 below the equivalent dollar figure and the new figures are identical. Microsoft has not published a currency-by-currency explanation.

Is it worth waiting for the price to come back down?

Nothing in the stated reasoning supports that. Microsoft expects console storage and memory prices to double again by autumn 2027, and Nintendo described the same cost pressure as medium to long term when it raised the Switch 2. Consoles have historically fallen in price over a generation, and that pattern is currently reversed.

Does the 2TB Series X being discontinued matter to buyers?

It matters as a signal more than as a product loss. Withdrawing the highest-capacity model rather than repricing it says the scarce component makes that configuration unviable, which is a stronger statement about supply than any of the price changes.

A component shock does not raise every price by the same amount, it raises them in proportion to how much of the scarce part each product contains. That is why the cheapest machine moved most and the biggest one disappeared. Read the percentages before you plan the next hardware purchase, because the entry model is no longer the safe default it used to be.

XboxMicrosoftconsole pricingmemory pricesDRAMhardware procurementNintendo

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