Xbox Series consoles and Game Pass subscriptions have seen significant price hikes, with the Series S increasing from R5999 to R8999 and the Series X from R11k to R13999, while Game Pass has risen from R129 to R268 per month. Picture: Michael Sherman/IOL
As an Apple fan, one of the best things about their offerings is that the older products grow cheaper over time. In the gaming industry, and especially with Microsoft Xbox, the opposite is true, and that’s just shameful.
The Xbox Series S and X consoles were released six years ago in November. The lower-spec Series S for 300 US dollars, which works out to around R5,100, and the Series X for 500 US dollars, or about R8,600. Of course, the price would be slightly more when the devices came to South Africa, but not much more.
I bought my Xbox Series S in March 2023 from Makro for R5,999, and now the same model is going for R9,998. That’s an increase of R4000 for the same product in just over three years. Also don't forget, this technology now six years old and the price continues to increase as time goes by.
If you want to pick up the Series X, it will cost you around R14,999 at the moment. I remember considering the fancier Series X version, but at around R11k at the time, I was not prepared to fork out such a sum despite the performance gains. That’s especially since there was around a R5,000 price difference between the two models— so I could have bought almost two Series S consoles for the same price.
