June 25 (Reuters) - Microsoft's Xbox is raising prices of its gaming consoles by up to $150 worldwide, citing a deepening global components crisis that has sent storage and memory costs soaring across the consumer electronics industry.
Groups representing automakers, retailers, electronics firms and others had warned earlier this month that the increasing demand for memory chips could lead to dramatic price hikes in U.S. consumer goods and disrupt supply chains.
Effective August 1, the price of Xbox
consoles will increase by $100 for 512 GB models and $150 for 1 TB models. Microsoft will also discontinue its 2 TB model.
"Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5 times and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027," Xbox said, adding that the hardware supply chain crisis has hit the gaming sector particularly hard.
Xbox raised the prices of its consoles twice last year, as it grappled with tariff-induced cost pressures, strong competition and uncertain spending.
Rival Sony raised the prices of its PlayStation 5 consoles effective April, following a price increase in August last year.
Apple, the world's most valuable consumer electronics company, raised iPad and MacBook prices on Thursday, saying it could no longer shield customers from soaring memory and storage chip costs driven by the AI industry's datacenter buildout.
Xbox is planning major layoffs next month and significant cuts to marketing and other budgets, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Maju Samuel)
