Owning an Xbox is about to get more expensive. Microsoft confirmed on June 25 that it is raising the price of the Xbox Series X and Series S worldwide on August 1, 2026 — the second time the company has lifted console prices in under a year, and a stark sign of just how badly the ongoing memory and storage crunch is squeezing hardware makers.
What is changing
The increases land at $100 for the 512GB models and $150 for the 1TB models. In the United States, that reshapes the lineup as follows once the new pricing takes effect:
- Xbox Series S (512GB) — $499.99
- Xbox Series S (1TB) — $599.99
- Xbox Series X (1TB, all-digital) — $749.99
- Xbox Series X (1TB, with disc drive) — $799.99
Microsoft is also sunsetting the 2TB Series X model, trimming the top of the range rather than carrying it forward at an even steeper price. The adjustments are global, with regional pricing updated to match local markets.
Why now?
The company points squarely at component costs. By Microsoft's own accounting, the price of console storage and memory has climbed by more than 2.5 times, and it expects those costs to roughly double again by the fall of 2027. RAM and NAND shortages have rippled across the entire industry in 2026 — the same pressures Valve cited when it priced its $1,049 Steam Machine earlier this month — and console manufacturers, who sell hardware on thin margins to begin with, have little room to absorb them.
That backdrop makes a second hike in a single year easier to explain, if no easier to swallow. Sony has faced the same headwinds, and the era of consoles getting cheaper as a generation matures appears to be firmly over.
What it means for players
If a Series X or Series S has been sitting on your wishlist, the math is simple: buying before August 1 locks in the current price. After that, the entry-level Series S at $499.99 sits where mid-range consoles used to live, and a disc-equipped Series X creeps toward the $800 mark that was once reserved for premium PC GPUs alone.
For Microsoft, the bet is that its software and services ecosystem — cloud play, cross-device libraries, and a steady drumbeat of day-one releases — keeps the platform attractive even as the hardware sticker grows. But with rival platforms wrestling the same cost curve, the bigger story is an industry-wide reset of what 'next-gen' costs to bring home.
