Xbox Series X price hiked by £170 due to rising memory chip costs

Microsoft has increased the price of Xbox consoles worldwide, citing rising memory and storage chip costs.

Its premium Series X console with a disc drive will now cost £670, when it previously retailed for £500.

Meanwhile a baseline Xbox Series S console now costs £430 - a roughly 43% increase on its previous £300 price tag.

It is among a host of tech firms to have told consumers that spiralling component costs mean they must charge more, with rival Sony hiking PlayStation 5 prices by £90 in March.

Microsoft said in June it had "hoped another price increase would not be necessary", but blamed the rising cost of console storage and memory for needing to raise prices on consumers.

In the US, its basic consoles rose by $100 to $499, and the cost of a console with more memory increased by $150 to $749.

Similar increases have been revealed in the EU as well - where a Series S console with more storage will cost roughly €200 more than it did before.

As well as Sony increasing PlayStation prices, Steam Machine maker Valve launched its PC-console hybrid at a much higher cost than expected.

Both likewise pointed to mounting costs for the hardware and storage components needed to power their devices.