Microsoft has announced significant price rises for Xbox consoles, blaming the ongoing “components crisis.”
Xbox console price rises June 2026:
Xbox Series S 512GB: $399.99 ---> $499.99
Xbox Series S 1TB: $449.99 ---> $599.99
Xbox Series X 1TB Digital: $599.99 ---> $749.99
Xbox Series X 1TB: $649.99 ---> $799.99



it’s this the first time I’m modern history that old products get more expensive?
definitely not a good sign
For computer hardware, it’s uncommon to see major increases — computer hardware has consistently seen dramatic long-term declines — but it does happen. The other major incident I can think of was 15 years back:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Thailand_floods
EDIT: Oh, right, and the cryptocurrency thing drove up some GPU prices for a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPU_mining
I think that it was more ASICs outperforming GPUs that wound up killing that off.
Forgot about crypto GPU thing.
Definitely a sign that something is wrong
I mean, what are you calling modern history? Lots of vintage games are more expensive now than at release.
I think they mean products that are not new to the market, but are still actively manufactured.
Ah that wasn’t clear to me. I can’t remember any consumer electronics getting more expensive while still in production in my lifetime, although if we expand out to other product categories it’s happening all over the past decade or so. Inflation combined with shrinkflation has been making pretty much everything worse value.
Remember $5 footlongs, 5 for $5 at Arby’s, or the 10 for $10 packs at Taco Bell?