Following a trend in the gaming market, Microsoft is hiking the prices of all Xbox variants in the US, with one particular version of the Series X costing up to $800. That’s the price of a solid PC, built from parts as old as the Xbox.
As announced on the Xbox support page, these new prices come into effect on Oct. 3. The Series S will run you $399.99 and $449.99 for the 512GB and 1TB variants, while the Series X will go for $599.99 and $649.99 for the Digital and Physical versions, respectively. The 2TB Galaxy Black Special Edition variant of the Series X now costs $799.99, which is a ludicrous price for five-year-old hardware that you’d expect to become cheaper over time.
In the case of consoles, that rule has no effect, and both Sony and Microsoft are steadily increasing the prices of their hardware despite their internal components remaining the same five-year-old parts they’ve had since the beginning. What’s more, Sony’s reportedly even cutting down drive space on its PlayStation consoles in Europe while maintaining the price, so it seems we’re even getting worse hardware with time, but with the same or higher prices.
These Xbox costs have been driven by “changes in the macroeconomic environment,” which could mean just about anything, from the Trump Administration’s new tariffs to supply chain issues. This also only affects US customers, with the rest of the world dodging the bullet.
No matter what, though, these are massive prices to pay for aged hardware since you could build fairly capable PCs for just about the same cost, given that graphics cards, CPUs, RAM sticks, and other components from 2020 are now dirt-cheap in second-hand markets.
With enough time and care, you could easily have a better machine for just as much money, or even less, and since Xbox games always simultaneously release on PC, there’s an extra reason to avoid buying these machines at inflated prices.
Additionally, if you’re in the market for a console specifically, you can still get the PlayStation 5 or PS5 Pro and play Xbox-exclusive titles, which are slowly but surely making their way to Sony’s platform.
The only argument left for buying an Xbox would be Game Pass, but then again, you can build a more competent PC and still subscribe to the Game Pass service, so there’s quite literally no point in forking over this much money for a near-last-generation machine.
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