Back in late June, Microsoft announced that they would be increasing the RRP of their Xbox consoles once again, with both the Series X and S seeing as much as a $150 hike. At the time, only US prices were provided. With said price rise having officially gone live, we’ve finally learned just how much an Xbox now costs in the UK.

As of August 2026, purchasing any current-gen Xbox console will now cost you far more than it did previously. As mentioned, while the revised US prices were previously shared, we’ve now gotten a full breakdown of the new costs in all other regions – with the UK being as follows:

• 512GB Series S [£299.99 – £429.99]
• 1TB Series S [£349.99 – £519.99]
• 512GB Series X [£449.99 – £619.99]
• 1TB Series X [£499.99 – £669.99]

While this does mean that the highest-end Series X remains cheaper than Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro (which now retails for £789.99), the latter is more performant while also including 2TB of storage. Additionally, the standard disc-based PS5 now costs far less than a Series X at £569.99.

Regardless, the Xbox Series consoles have struggled somewhat to sell even at their original prices, and so it’s safe to assume that this new hike won’t be doing Microsoft any favours (even without accounting for the loss on every system sold).

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KitGuru says: Has Microsoft given up on this generation? How much do you think the next-gen Project Helix will cost? Let us know your thoughts down below.

While Valve doesn't share specific sales numbers for any of its products, it would seem that the recent Steam Deck price hikes have had a meaningful impact on sales. According to a new report, sales may have dropped by as much as 80%. 

Valve raised the price for its Steam Deck OLED models a couple of months ago due to massively inflated costs for components like RAM and SSDs. As a result, the 512GB and 1TB models both rose in price by more than 40%, with a 1TB Steam Deck OLED now costing over $900.

As spotted by TechPowerUp, estimates from Boiling Steam show that the Steam Deck may have dropped from selling up to 18,000 units per week to up to 3000 units per week in July. Revenue generated by Steam Deck sales may have dropped by as much as 80%, as the system has continued to drop in the Steam Sale charts, after being a consistent top ten seller since launch.

Unfortunately, the likelihood of Steam Deck prices coming back down to normal levels is low. Valve has warned that memory prices are still getting worse and the prices consumers are seeing are lagging behind what OEMs like Valve are seeing by up to six months. If RAM and SSD prices continue to rise like Valve expects, then there is a chance that the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine end up becoming even more expensive over time rather than getting cheaper. This is something we have seen impacting the console market as well, with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S systems now costing hundreds of dollars more compared to their launch day prices six years ago.

KitGuru Says: The consumer tech market is in a very rough spot right now. Have your upgrade plans been put on hold due to current prices? 

After two price hikes in one year, Xbox and Microsoft are going for the hat trick of price hikes, with the price of the Xbox Series X/S going up for the third time in 15 months. As of August 1, 2026, the price of a Series S/X console is going up by $100 or $150, respectively. The 2TB variant is also being discontinued. The news comes from a statement shared on Xbox Wire, which also introduces multiple programs Microsoft is kicking up to try and make the consoles "more accessible," even amidst the prices rising yet again. Before digging into […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/xbox-series-x-s-price-hike-august-2026/

Last night in a shocking announcement, Valve raised Steam Deck prices by 50%, bringing the 2TB OLED model up to just shy of $1000. I'm a big fan of the Steam Deck and have recommended it many times over the years, but at this point, pricing is so out of hand that I actually think Valve should just cancel all of its hardware plans. 

There is absolutely no world where I would be comfortable normalising a near $1000 price tag for a handheld at the performance level of the Steam Deck. With the RAM shortage impacting the Steam Deck this badly, I now fear just how much the Steam Machine is going to cost. When the system was first announced and we began hearing that it would cost ‘more than a console', my gut feeling was that the Steam Machine would be priced at $999 in a worst-case scenario. The Steam Deck price hike shows me that we are far past my own estimates.

Brad Lynch, a Valve-focused gamer who has previously leaked things like Counter-Strike 2, has said that he heard months ago that the Steam Machine would be priced higher than the new Steam Deck price. If true, then Valve has lost the plot and I wouldn't recommend that anyone purchase one. The Steam Machine already has very low-grade specs, the sort of spec we would expect to see in the cheapest gaming laptop. We absolutely cannot normalise such high prices for such weak hardware, whether there is a RAM shortage or not.

With prices seemingly reaching an absolutely ridiculous degree, the pool of potential customers for Valve to sell to is getting smaller and smaller. At $1000, the Steam Machine would have been a tough sell but enthusiasts still would have stepped up, but at $1200 and potentially even more than that, I don't see a scenario where any enthusiast would buy one. At that point, you could buy a current-gen console and several full-priced games to go with it, so you aren't going to win over the console player. Meanwhile, PC enthusiasts would rather use that kind of money to build their own DIY system with better specs.

KitGuru Says: At a certain point, the price just becomes so prohibitive that there is no market left. This clearly isn't going to grow the PC gaming audience, or Valve's Steam user base, so what's the point? 

There's no doubt that GTA 6 will attract an absolutely massive audience when it launches on November 19 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X. According to Circana's Matt Piscatella, though, a lot of casual gamers may be in for a rude awakening when they head to the store to buy one of those consoles and the game in six months' time. Speaking to The Game Business show, he said: Those folks who don't pay a lot of attention that have heard, okay, well GTA 6 is coming, but they're not really keyed in. That's a lot of […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/gta-6-console-price-shock-casual-buyers-analyst-warning/

Intel is reportedly preparing extensive price hikes for its consumer CPU lineup this year, at a time when the firm's offering started to look a bit better with the newer Core Ultra 200S Plus SKUs. Intel's CPU Price Hikes Could Go Up To 30% This Year Alone, Driven By Enterprise Demand CPU shortages are a new trouble brewing for gamers that has arrived with the AI infrastructure buildout, and sadly enough, the effects are already being seen in the retail market. In a recent report, we discussed how the debut of Intel's Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs came with a price […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/just-as-intels-cpus-make-a-comeback-with-arrow-lake-refresh-new-round-of-price-hikes-might-put-them-out-of-reach-for-gamers/

Memory shortages have prices for tech shooting up across multiple market segments but gaming is being hit particularly hard. This week, Sony announced that it is having to raise PlayStation hardware prices in the US, Europe, UK and Japan. Once the new pricing comes into effect, the PS5 will officially be $200 more expensive than it was at launch in 2020. 

The PS5 initially launched with a $399 entry-level price tag for the Digital Edition, going up to $499 for the disc-drive version. Now from April 2nd, prices will be raising to to $599 for the Digital Edition, and $649 for the disc-drive version. The PS5 Pro is also going up in price from $749.99 to $899.99.

In Europe, the new Euro price matches the same figure as the USD price. Here in the UK, pricing works out to £569.99 for a standard PS5, £519.99 for a Digital Edition console and £789.99 for a PS5 Pro.

Unfortunately, even the PlayStation Portal companion device is impacted, with pricing going up to $249.99 in the US and £219.99 in the UK.

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KitGuru Says: Typically this late into a console generation, we would see prices coming down significantly. Unfortunately, the exact opposite has happened during this current console generation. At first, the price hikes came due to covid-related supply chain struggles. Now, they are happening due to volatile memory and SSD prices. 

According to French content creator Gyo, retailers have been alerted to an imminent price hike across Sony's entire PlayStation console family, including PS5 Slim, PS5 Pro, and PS Portal. The prices of both the Slim and the Pro would increase by €100, with a higher percentage increase for the former, while the handheld cloud-powered PS Portal would be priced €30 higher than the current price. Here's a table comparing the current and rumored pricing: Console Current EU MSRP Rumoured New Price Increase % Hike PS5 Slim Digital Edition €499.99 — — — PS5 Slim Disc Edition €549.99 €649.99 +€100 +18.2% […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/ps5-ps5-pro-ps-portal-console-might-get-more-expensive/

Lenovo has reportedly notified its channel partners that significant price increases are expected to hit its PC and server line-ups starting in March 2026. In a letter, North America channel chief Wade McFarland and regional president Ryan McCurdy confirmed that the company’s Intelligent Devices Group (IDG) and Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) are adjusting pricing to offset the soaring costs of memory and storage components.

Also in the letter obtained by CRN (via TechPowerUp), to mitigate the impact on long-term projects, Lenovo has advised partners to finalise and submit orders before the end of February to lock in current rates before the March transition takes effect.

The new strategy is particularly pronounced within Lenovo’s ISG unit, which manages server and storage solutions. Price quotes for internal bidding platforms are now being restricted to a 14-day window, while external quotes are capped at 30 days. This way, the company avoids being caught in long-term contracts that no longer reflect the rapid rise in component costs. Furthermore, Lenovo has moved to simplify its enterprise offerings by consolidating product lineups and reducing configuration complexity.

This situation reflects a broader trend affecting the entire hardware sector. The surge in demand for High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for AI data centers has syphoned off production capacity that would normally be allocated to the DDR5 and LPDDR5X modules used in consumer systems. As manufacturing lead times for these components continue to increase, other major PC providers are expected to raise prices as well.

KitGuru says: Lenovo might be the first, but it won't be the only company raising prices this year.