Xbox Series X price hiked by £170 due to rising memory chip costs
Liv McMahonTechnology reporter
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Microsoft has increased the price of Xbox consoles worldwide, citing rising memory and storage chip costs.
Its premium Series X console with a disc drive will now cost £670, when it previously retailed for £500.
Meanwhile a baseline Xbox Series S console now costs £430 - a roughly 43% increase on its previous £300 price tag.
It is among a host of tech firms to have told consumers that spiralling component costs mean they must charge more, with rival Sony hiking PlayStation 5 prices by £90 in March.
Microsoft said in June it had "hoped another price increase would not be necessary", but blamed the rising cost of console storage and memory for needing to raise prices on consumers.
In the US, its basic consoles rose by $100 to $499, and the cost of a console with more memory increased by $150 to $749.
Similar increases have been revealed in the EU as well - where a Series S console with more storage will cost roughly €200 more than it did before.
As well as Sony increasing PlayStation prices, Steam Machine maker Valve launched its PC-console hybrid at a much higher cost than expected.
Both likewise pointed to mounting costs for the hardware and storage components needed to power their devices.
Once a cheap part used to provide computers and a range of gadgets with short-term memory, random-access memory (RAM) has shot up in price due, in part, to demand from AI firms.
Prices for graphics cards, a key component of consoles and gaming PCs, have also gone up because of their use in generating AI content.
But large tech firms have faced criticism for passing such costs to consumers - particularly when it can mean paying eye-watering amounts for products released years ago.
X user @BlackPanthaa called the new Xbox Series S price "absolutely disgusting", while a Reddit user said it was "highway robbery for a console released 6 years ago".
Some fear console prices - which have essentially been raised across the board in recent months - could go higher still.
"This ain't even the ceiling," wrote Windows Central editor Jez Corden on X of Xbox's price increases.
Amazon's gaming boss recently told the BBC increasing hardware costs may lead more people to ditch consoles and stream games instead.
Xbox has also seen its own struggles lately, with owner Microsoft recently revealing revenues had dipped across its gaming division.
In July, it initiated what executives called "the most significant restructure in Xbox history" with approximately 3,200 reductions across its workforce.
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