Xbox has dramatically hiked the price of its consoles amid a global crisis.
Microsoft, the makers of the console, said that the “entire consumer electronics industry is struggling” and that it was being forced to increase prices to keep selling the Xbox.
It is the third time that Microsoft has increased the price of its consoles since 2025. It said that it hoped that another price increase would “not be necessary” and that it had worked to try and avoid it happening again – but that it had been forced to because of global problems.
It will increase the price of its 512GB models by $100 and $150 for its 1TB models. It would stop selling the largest 2TB models, it said.
It blamed a worldwide problem with the accessibility of RAM, which is required to power consoles and just about every other consumer gadget. The price of that RAM has dramatically increased amid the AI boom, which depends on the hardware and has thus dramatically reduced supply and pushed up prices.
“Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027,” Xbox said.
“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.”
Microsoft said that it would launch a range of programmes to make Xbox consoles “more accessible”. That includes buy now, pay later options, interest free financing and a range of ways of selling previously used consoles.
Microsoft’s announcement came on the same day that Apple said it had been forced to make similar changes, pushing up the prices of iPads and Macs by around 20 per cent. It also blamed the worldwide RAM crisis, and it too said that it had worked hard to avoid price increases but that supplier costs had made it impossible to avoid.
