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Xbox has warned that even more price increases for its Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles are on the horizon. Within the past day, Xbox announced its third price increase since 2025 for its current-gen platforms. This change, which will go into effect on August 1st, will see the 1TB version of the Xbox Series X now selling for $800, while the cheapest model of the Xbox Series S will be $500. And while these represent drastic increases in price since both platforms launched in 2020, it sounds like their prices are going to keep climbing even higher.
When explaining its reasoning behind this new price increase, Xbox said in a post on its website that it anticipates component costs to continue skyrocketing into 2027. At this point, Xbox explained that storage and memory components have increased by over double since 2025. When looking forward, Xbox projects that these components will end up being five times more expensive than they once were by Fall 2027. If true, this all but guarantees that the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are going to see their sale prices go up beyond where they’re at right now.
“We hoped another price increase would not be necessary, and we have spent the last several months working with suppliers on options,” Xbox said. “Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027. The entire consumer electronics industry is struggling with the current components crisis, but the effects are particularly hard on consoles.”
Part of the reason that Xbox seems to have been hit so hard by these manufacturing cost increases is because it didn’t purchase enough components at their previous, lower price. Long before these component shortages came into effect, sales for the Xbox Series X and S were beginning to slow down. Naturally, Xbox then opted to scale back the number of components that it was purchasing to account for these lower sales. As a result, however, Xbox has been forced to purchase new storage and memory components at their current, higher rate rather than first using up its supply of previous components that were bought for less.
Moving forward, it’s hard to see how Xbox can justify releasing a new console, currently dubbed Project Helix, in 2027. If these trends continue, the Xbox Series X is going to sell for well over $1000 by next year, which would put Helix seemingly between $1500 and $2000. Whether or not Helix will ultimately be pushed back remains to be seen, but this is almost certainly the most troubling market that tech companies have been forced to navigate since the turn of the century.
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