The Xbox Series X Price Is Now £100 More Than a PS5

The Xbox Series X price in Britain went up by £170 in early August, taking the disc-drive console from £499.99 to £669.99. That is not a rounding error or a retailer's markup — it came from Microsoft. And it means the flagship Xbox now sits £100 above the standard PlayStation 5, which Sony raised to £569.99 back in March.

Microsoft's explanation is memory. In a statement reported by outlets including Video Games Chronicle, the company said console storage and memory costs have already risen by more than 2.5 times, and it expects them to roughly double again by autumn 2027. As recently as June, Microsoft had said it hoped another increase would not be needed. Two months later, here we are.

If you had a console pencilled in as a Christmas present, the maths has changed badly. A Series X plus one extra controller and a year of the cheaper Game Pass tier now comfortably clears £800. The cheap entry point has moved too, which matters far more to most households than the top-end box does.

What you'll actually pay now

The rise landed across the whole range rather than one model, and the percentage hit is worst at the bottom end. Here is how the four main UK configurations shifted, based on the figures reported by God is a Geek and confirmed across the trade press.

The two Series X boxes

The all-digital 1TB Series X moved from £449.99 to £619.99. The 1TB model with a disc drive went from £499.99 to £669.99. Both are up exactly £170, so the digital version still saves you £50 — but you give up the ability to buy second-hand discs, which is precisely the trick people use to cope with expensive hardware.

The Series S is no longer the cheap one

The 512GB Series S rose from £299.99 to £429.99, a jump of about 43%. The 1TB version went from £349.99 to £519.99. That second figure is the awkward one: a machine sold as the budget, lower-spec option now costs more than a full-fat Series X did in June.

How far this is from launch day

Both consoles arrived in November 2020 at £449.99 and £249.99. Five and a half years on, the Series X is up around 49% and the Series S has climbed roughly 72% — for identical hardware. Console prices have historically fallen over a generation. This one has gone the other way, and steeply.

Why the Xbox Series X price is really an AI story

Consoles run on DRAM, the same broad category of memory chip that AI data centres are hoovering up. J.P. Morgan Global Research has estimated DRAM prices will have risen more than 400% between the start of 2024 and the end of 2026. Research firm IDC reckons AI data centres will swallow around 70% of global memory output this year, up from 20–30% in 2022.

Only three companies — Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron — make more than 95% of the world's DRAM, and all three have been shifting production towards the high-bandwidth memory that AI servers need. Gaming consoles are a low-margin customer competing against the highest-margin buyer the chip industry has ever had. Microsoft is not winning that argument.

"This ain't even the ceiling." — Jez Corden, Windows Central editor, on where hardware prices go next

Sony and Nintendo are in the same queue

This is not an Xbox problem. Sony added £90 to the PS5 in March. Nintendo is lifting the Switch 2 in the US from $449.99 to $499.99 from 1 September. Valve's Steam Machine launched dearer than most expected, with the company also pointing at component costs. Whichever platform you prefer, the bill is arriving.

Will any of this come back down?

Not soon, on the industry's own forecasts. Microsoft has effectively told customers to expect memory costs to double again by late 2027, which is a warning as much as an excuse. Fab capacity takes years to build, and none of the big three is racing to add consumer-grade DRAM lines while AI buyers are paying more. Assume today's Xbox Series X price is a floor, not a peak.

What to do if you were planning to buy

Move fast on old stock, or don't buy hardware at all this year. A few practical points:

• UK retailers bought at the old wholesale price. Boxes already on shelves may still carry pre-August tickets for a few weeks.
• Refurbished and boxed second-hand units are suddenly good value — expect their prices to drift up too as new stock gets dearer.
• Cloud streaming through Game Pass on a phone, TV stick or old laptop skips the hardware bill entirely. Amazon's gaming leadership has already suggested pricier consoles will push people that way.
• If you own a working Series X or S, upgrade storage rather than replace the console. Even that is getting costlier, so do it sooner.

Watch the shelves through September. Once retailers clear stock bought at the old cost, the £669.99 sticker becomes the real, everywhere price — and Black Friday, for the first time in years, may bring bundles rather than genuine discounts.