Xbox Raises Console Prices Worldwide by Up to $150 and Kills the 2TB Model

Microsoft is raising the price of every Xbox Series console worldwide, and the increases are not small. Starting August 1, 2026, the 512GB models go up by $100 and the 1TB models go up by $150. The 2TB model is being discontinued outright.

This is the second hike in under a year. Last October, Xbox pushed US prices up by somewhere between $20 and $70. This one is bigger, and it is global.

Microsoft’s explanation is memory. The company says console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5 times, and it expects them to double again by the fall of 2027. It also made the point that consoles are usually sold at a loss, for less than they cost to build, which is true and has been true for most of the modern era. To soften the blow there are buy-now-pay-later options, 0% financing for up to twelve months, trade-in programs, and certified refurbished units at up to $100 off.

I am not here to dunk on Microsoft for the cost of RAM, which is a real problem nobody at Xbox invented. What I care about is the direction. The whole promise of a console, going back decades, was that the hardware got cheaper as it aged. You waited, the price dropped, the library got deep and affordable, and that is the window where a lot of us fell in love with the thing. That window is closing. A console getting more expensive three years into its life is not how this is supposed to work.

For collectors, and for anyone who buys hardware to keep, the takeaway is blunt: the cheap-late-in-the-generation Xbox may not be coming. If you have been waiting for the price to fall, it just went the other way, and the company is telling you to expect more of the same.