Xbox price rise lands in the UK and Europe, three months before GTA 6

Microsoft's new Xbox console prices took effect on August 1, and the European figures turned out to be the sharpest part of the increase. The company had announced the move on June 25 in an Xbox Wire post that gave US numbers only: plus $100 for 512 GB consoles, plus $150 for 1 TB consoles, worldwide, from August 1, with the 2 TB model discontinued. The local tables surfaced when the change went live, and VGC and Kotaku laid them out.

The Series X with a disc drive goes from €599.99 to €799.99, and in Britain from £499.99 to £669.99, about a third more. The cheapest way onto the platform, the Series S with 512 GB, goes from €349.99 to €499.99 and from £299.99 to £429.99, roughly 43 percent more. In percentage terms the hardest hit is the Series S 1 TB: €399.99 to €599.99, half again as much, and £349.99 to £519.99. The all-digital Series X moves from €549.99 to €749.99 and from £449.99 to £619.99. In the US, where Microsoft published the numbers back in June, the Series X with a drive now lists at $799.99.

The reason Microsoft gives is the component market. Storage and memory prices 'have increased by more than 2.5x', the Xbox Wire post says, and the company expects 'another doubling by the fall of 2027'; it adds that it had hoped a further increase would not be necessary and spent several months working with suppliers on the alternatives.

For GTA 6 the arithmetic is direct. The game arrives on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, no PC version announced, so anyone still on last-generation hardware has to buy one of those two consoles first. Three and a half months before that date, the Xbox half of the choice costs a third to a half more in Britain and Europe. Sony is under the same memory squeeze and has landed differently so far: its July 30 quarterly report says it has secured the memory for its PS5 sales plan through March 2027, and it has announced no new price rise since March 2026.

One detail worth keeping in mind while comparing the two Series X models: the more expensive one is the version with a disc drive, and GTA 6's boxed copy is a download code rather than a disc, as Rockstar's own support pages state. For this particular game, the drive buys nothing.