Xbox Just Raised Console Prices Right Before GTA 6, and Europe Got Hit Hardest

With Grand Theft Auto VI arriving on November 19, the last thing anyone shopping for a console wanted to see was a price increase, but that's exactly what has happened. Microsoft has now revealed the full extent of its Xbox Series X and Series S price hikes for Europe and the United Kingdom, and the numbers are steep. The Xbox Series X now costs as much as €200 more in some markets.

For months, we have tracked the prices of consoles for this launch closely, including which machine actually makes sense for GTA 6 and Sony's repeated reassurances about PlayStation 5 stock. This latest move complicates that picture.

Back in June, Microsoft warned a price rise was coming on August 1, but only confirmed the United States figures at the time. Microsoft hid the price increase in Europe and the UK until it took effect and it's easy to see why the company didn't announce them until the last minute. In Europe the Xbox Series X with a disc drive now sits at around €799.99, up from €599.99, and even the entry-level Series S has jumped substantially. In the UK, the Series X now runs to roughly £669.99.

The core reason is the ongoing memory shortage. The boom in artificial intelligence has driven up the price of memory and storage components worldwide, and consoles are built from those same parts. Every manufacturer is feeling it. Sony has PS5 prices more than once, and Nintendo has confirmed Switch 2 increases are coming. For the first time in gaming history, every console maker is raising prices at the exact point in a generation when prices normally fall.

However, unlike its competitors, Xbox hardware is not selling well. Industry estimates put PlayStation 5 sales at over 95 million consoles, while Xbox Series sales are estimated at somewhere around 35 million. When you sell far fewer units, you have far less flexibility to absorb rising costs, because you cannot spread them across a huge base. So while the memory shortage is hitting everyone, Microsoft is arguably in a weaker position to shield its customers from it.

Xbox can't afford to eat costs to stay competitive, so it's passing the costs onto the consumer, putting the company in an awkward position ahead of GTA 6's launch in November.

A huge game launch is normally a golden window for selling consoles. Millions of people who have been putting off an upgrade suddenly have a concrete reason to buy, and GTA 6 is the biggest such reason in over a decade. Raising your prices right before that window is the opposite of what you would do if you were trying to capture those buyers. Microsoft is making its console more expensive at the precise moment the largest wave of potential buyers in years is deciding what to play GTA 6 on.

So what should you actually do if you were planning to buy a console for the game? If you specifically want an Xbox and you are in Europe or the UK, don't expect the price to come down anytime soon. Don't bother waiting for a better deal because it isn't coming. The best way to play GTA 6 right now is to compare the current real prices in your region carefully rather than assuming either console is the obvious value.

It's quite unfortunate that the most anticipated game in years is arriving into a console market where, for the first time, every single machine to play it on is getting more expensive rather than cheaper and a time when physical discs as well as collectible releases are becoming obsolete. It makes for a strange and slightly grim backdrop for a milestone event, and a reminder that the GTA 6 launch is landing in a hardware market under real strain, no matter how much excitement surrounds the game itself.