Xbox Series S Now Pricier Than Switch 2 in UK After £130 Hike

Microsoft's third Xbox price rise in a year pushes Series S above Nintendo's hybrid console

The Xbox Series S cost £299.99 on Friday. Since Saturday, it costs £429.99. Microsoft's third Xbox price increase in just over a year took effect on 1 August 2026, and the consequences for UK buyers are stark: for the first time, Microsoft's entry-level home console now costs more than the Nintendo Switch 2.

Nintendo's hybrid sits at £395.99 in the UK, putting it £34 below the newly repriced Series S. That gap, however, is almost certainly temporary.

What Microsoft has done — and why

Microsoft announced the price changes on 25 June 2026, giving buyers just over five weeks' notice before the rises took effect. The full new UK price list, confirmed on the official Xbox website, is as follows:

• Xbox Series S (512GB): £429.99 (was £299.99) — a £130 rise
• Xbox Series S (1TB): £519.99 (was £349.99) — a £170 rise
• Xbox Series X (1TB, Digital): £619.99 (was £449.99) — a £170 rise
• Xbox Series X (1TB, Disc): £669.99 (was £499.99) — a £170 rise

Microsoft also discontinued its 2TB Xbox console model as part of the same announcement.

The company pointed to a global shortage of storage and memory components as the driving force. In a post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft said:

"Last October, we increased Xbox console price by $20–$70 in the U.S. We hoped another price increase would not be necessary, and we have spent the last several months working with suppliers on options. Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027. The entire consumer electronics industry is struggling with the current components crisis, but the effects are particularly hard on consoles."

Microsoft also noted that consoles are typically sold below manufacturing cost, meaning component inflation hits the business particularly hard. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma had previously stated that costs had increased fivefold from two years ago.

The Switch 2 comparison — and the closing window

The arithmetic is uncomfortable for Microsoft. The Xbox Series S launched in November 2020 at £249.99. It now costs £429.99 — an increase of £180, or around 72%, since launch. As Wolf's Gaming Blog noted, that puts the Series S just £20 below the £449.99 launch price of the disc-equipped PlayStation 5: Microsoft's entry-level, disc-free, lower-powered console now costs almost exactly what Sony's flagship PS5 did on day one.

Against the Switch 2, the Series S is currently £34 more expensive. But that comparison will shift from 1 September 2026, when Nintendo's own price rise is due to take effect. Nintendo announced its increase on 11 May 2026. In the US, the Switch 2 is confirmed to rise from $449.99 to $499.99. In Europe, the console will increase to €499.99. Nintendo has not officially confirmed the exact new UK price in pounds sterling, but it is expected to rise by roughly £30, bringing it to around £430 — broadly in line with the newly priced Series S.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa cited memory costs, exchange rates, and oil prices when confirming the decision — describing it as the first time Nintendo had raised the price of a console in well over a decade.

It is also worth noting that some UK retailers, including Argos and Smyths, were reported to still be selling Xbox consoles at pre-hike prices as of this weekend, though exact stock availability has not been confirmed.

The same crisis, two consoles

Both price rises trace back to the same root cause: a global shortage of memory chips driven largely by AI data centres consuming chip supply at extraordinary pace. The LPDDR5X memory inside the Switch 2 saw costs rise sharply through the first half of 2026 for exactly this reason. Microsoft's Xbox Wire post confirmed storage and memory prices had increased 2.5 times and were expected to double again by autumn 2027.

The two consoles are not direct equivalents. The Xbox Series S is a traditional home console — it must be plugged into a television to play games. The Switch 2 is a hybrid: it works both docked at home and as a handheld. On raw GPU performance, developer Virtuos's technical director Eoin O'Grady offered useful context, telling TechRadar: "GPU-wise, the Switch 2 performs slightly below the Series S; this difference is more noticeable in handheld mode. However, the Series S does not support technologies like DLSS, which the Switch 2 does. This makes the GPU capabilities of the two consoles comparable overall."

Storage is another contrast: even the base Series S carries 512GB of internal storage, while the Switch 2 ships with 256GB.

The Switch 2 is selling — and the clock is ticking

None of this is happening in a vacuum. The Switch 2 has been one of the UK's biggest hardware stories of the past year, hitting one million UK sales in just 52 weeks — 30 weeks faster than the original Switch reached the same milestone, making it the sixth fastest-selling home console in UK chart history.

For anyone who has already decided they want a Switch 2, the maths are straightforward: buying before 1 September locks in the current £395.99 price ahead of a rise expected to add somewhere between £25 and £35. The window to act is shrinking, and once both consoles are sitting at roughly £430, the brief moment where Nintendo's hybrid was the cheaper option will already be history.