Has Console Gaming Become More Expensive? PS5, Xbox, and What’s Next

PS5 and Xbox Series X cost more in the US than they did at launch in 2020. Subscriptions have also become more expensive, and some new games now cost $80. But wages have risen too, so higher price tags alone don't tell us whether console gaming has become harder to afford.

I compared the cost of a console, games, and a year's subscription in 2020 and 2026, accounting for inflation and US earnings. The results differed by platform: measured in days of work at the median wage, the PS5 package in this comparison became more affordable, while the Xbox Series X package became more expensive.

I'll examine what drives that difference, how today's console packages compare with a PC build, and what leaks suggest about next-generation prices. Sony and Microsoft haven't announced those prices, so the future costs calculated here are possible scenarios.

Our comparison covers one first-year spending scenario for someone starting from scratch, not a minimum every player must pay. PlayStation gets a disc-drive PS5, annual PS Plus Essential, five games, and a second DualSense for playing together. Xbox gets a Series X, 12 months of Game Pass Ultimate, and two separately purchased games, with its subscription catalog covering other play.

Console, subscription, and game figures use recommended prices; PC figures specify their retail measure and date. Everything is in nominal US dollars before sales tax. The US provides a common price list and matching Bureau of Labor Statistics data. A workday means one-fifth of median weekly earnings.

The CPI-U inflation index, without seasonal adjustment, rose from 260.229 in November 2020 to 336.940 in September 2026, a multiplier of 1.295. Median weekly earnings for full-time US employees were $984 in Q4 2020 and $1,232 in Q3 2026, also without seasonal adjustment. Dividing by five gives $196.80 per workday then and $246.40 now.

The next-generation estimates are converted into days of work using 2026 earnings. First, here's what a console, games, and a year's subscription cost when the current generation launched in 2020.

The launch prices of 2020 look almost like sale prices now. A disc-drive PS5 was $499.99, while the Digital Edition was $399.99. Sony did not price every launch game alike: Demon's Souls was $69.99, but Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales was $49.99. Our historical package prices all five games at $69.99, making its $349.95 game allowance an upper estimate.

Annual PS Plus contributes $59.99. Sony's 2022 relaunch announcement described Essential at that annual rate as the same price as the existing PlayStation Plus. Add another DualSense at $69.99 and the total becomes $979.92, or 5.0 workdays at 2020 earnings.

Microsoft launched Series X on November 10, 2020, for $499, and Series S for $299. Xbox All Access offered another route: from $24.99 a month for Series S or $34.99 for Series X over 24 months. Our scenario instead assumes buying the console outright and paying Game Pass Ultimate's 2019 launch rate of $14.99 a month, or $179.88 for a year. Two additional games at $69.99 each add $139.98, producing an $818.86 Xbox total, or 4.2 workdays.

The consoles themselves cost almost the same. The gap comes mainly from buying five games versus using a subscription catalog and buying two. In this scenario, Xbox was closer to a library membership, and that membership cost less than five full-price new releases.

Over six years, both bills grew, but their individual items moved at very different speeds.

Sony's current US prices took effect on April 2, 2026: $649.99 for PS5, $599.99 for the Digital Edition, $899.99 for PS5 Pro, and $249.99 for PlayStation Portal. Isabelle Tomatis, SIE's vice president of global marketing, explained the increase by pointing to the wider economy:

Games and the DualSense rose more slowly than the console, while annual PS Plus Essential rose slightly faster. It has cost $79.99 since September 6, 2023. The standard edition of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is still listed at $69.99 on playstation.com, matching Demon's Souls at launch. GTA 6 is scheduled for November 19, 2026, at $79.99 for the standard edition and $99.99 for Ultimate. Four $69.99 games plus standard GTA 6 make $359.95. PlayStation Direct lists DualSense at $74.00, although it is currently unavailable to order. Together, those items total $1,163.93.

Inflation turns the old $979.92 bill into $1,268.78 in today's dollars, above our current total. Earnings tell a similar story: 5.0 workdays became 4.7. Median weekly earnings grew by a factor of 1.25, the PS5's price by 1.30, and our whole package by about 1.19. The console itself slightly outpaced inflation: its old $499.99 is equivalent to about $647.38 now, against a $649.99 price tag.

That number is inconvenient for the argument that gaming has become a luxury, and I won't hide it: on this line of the bill, the claim that consoles have become unaffordable does not hold.

Xbox went the other way. Microsoft raised worldwide console prices on August 1, 2026, by $100 for 512GB models and $150 for 1TB models. Hitmarker reports that this was the third increase since launch: Series X went from $649.99 to $799.99 and Series S from $399.99 to $499.99. Ultimate's reduced spring price of $22.99 a month means $275.88 a year. A $69.99 game plus $79.99 GTA 6 adds $149.98. Our Series X package reaches $1,225.85, or 5.0 workdays, up from 4.2.

Inflation would bring the old Xbox package to $1,060.25. Series X itself costs 1.60 times its launch price, compared with the 1.295 inflation multiplier. This package has become more expensive in real terms.

Nintendo is outside our package calculation, but it has also raised prices. Switch 2 went from $449.99 to $499.99 in the US on September 1, 2026, citing changes in market conditions. Nintendo lists the Mario Kart World bundle for preorder at $549.99, and the game separately at $79.99.

For the wider history, see why video games became more expensive.

Step away from the standard model, to a Pro or a Series X, and the arithmetic stops being reassuring.

At $899.99, PS5 Pro costs 1.80 times the launch price of a standard PS5, well above inflation. Substituting it in our package produces $1,413.93, or 5.7 workdays. That exceeds the cost of our 2020 package in both real dollars and workdays. Series X's 1.60 price multiplier is another example of that pressure.

Imagine choosing a console for GTA 6 and wanting the best visuals. Our standard PS5 package takes 4.7 workdays of median earnings; the Pro version takes 5.7. The extra workday comes entirely from the hardware upgrade.

Circana's figures show what US buyers actually paid across models, rather than any single console's recommended price. For January through August 2026, industry advisor Mat Piscatella reported average new Xbox hardware prices of $529, up 26% year over year, and PlayStation prices of $597, up 20%. Both averages were US records. Unit sales fell 33% for Xbox to an all-time low, and 25% for PlayStation. In August alone, the average new gaming hardware price reached $541, against $476 a year earlier, while hardware unit sales declined 15% to 559,000.

Higher averages and lower unit sales arrived together, and Piscatella described the US hardware market as being in its most precarious position since the early 1980s:

Circana's September US figures, published October 22, show PS5 unit sales rising 22% year over year while Xbox Series fell 27%. The average price paid per hardware unit sold during September was $646 for PS5 and $663 for Xbox Series. These are average prices paid, not model MSRPs, and the more expensive PS5 sold better in September than a year earlier.

Against that backdrop, Microsoft's trade-in campaign makes an unusual offer. Windows Central reports emails encouraging owners to trade unused Series X/S consoles at Best Buy; 3DNews, citing that report, gives trade-in amounts of up to $375 for Series X and $200 for Series S. A new Series X is $799.99 in the same price snapshot. One new console costs more than twice the maximum quoted Series X trade-in value. Generosity apparently has a different exchange rate at checkout.

The familiar response is to build a PC instead. Retail component prices have made that alternative harder to budget for, too.

NVIDIA's RTX 3060 Ti offers a midrange reference point from the generation's launch: it went on sale on December 2, 2020, starting at $399. A current reference is the RTX 5060, which NVIDIA priced at $299; the 5060 Ti started at $379 for 8GB and $429 for 16GB.

Those starting prices look encouraging, but retail listings tell a different story. Tom's Hardware's Newegg survey, reported by Club386, found that between June and August 2026 the median RTX 5060 listing rose from $369.99 to $469.99, about 27%. The 16GB RTX 5060 Ti moved from $569.99 to $804.99, about 41%. RTX 5070 went from $659.99 to $899.99, about 36%. These are median listings, but the survey found no card in stock at launch MSRP.

For a longer comparison, see the history of graphics card prices.

Memory prices rose more sharply. Small tracker Capital & Compute records the cheapest 2×16GB DDR5-6000 kit at $63 on September 4, 2025, and $456 on October 7, 2026. Its average listing rose from $131 to $592 over the same period.

PCWorld put the problem into a complete machine. Using PCPartPicker prices from February 2, 2026, Michael Crider selected a Ryzen 5 7600X, an 8GB RTX 5060 at $329.99, 32GB of DDR5-5600 at $312.99, a 1TB SSD at $134.99, and the remaining components. His attempt at an approximately $1,000 gaming PC totaled $1,178.80 including $10 for shipping the case, before tax, and about $1,250 with Pennsylvania sales tax. His verdict was blunt.

Even that was February. Replacing the GPU and memory allowances with August's median Newegg RTX 5060 listing and October's cheapest DDR5-6000 kit produces an editorial estimate of $1,461.81, or about $1,462. Even PCWorld's original $1,178.80 machine, without games or a subscription, exceeds our $1,163.93 PlayStation package with five games and another controller.

There is no complete 2020 PC column here: that period used DDR4, so a direct comparison with a DDR5 kit would mix generations, and the graphics card is the only fair historical comparison.

Does all this mean gaming has become a luxury? Both sides of that argument come with numbers.

The luxury argument has substantial evidence. Series X and the Pro have outpaced inflation, retail graphics card and memory prices have drifted far from MSRPs, and the next generation, judging by the leaks, costs more than this one before the first game.

The inflation argument has evidence too. The simplest entry point did not get more expensive in real terms, Game Pass got cheaper in the spring, Sony's games cost what they did at the start of the generation, and no next-generation console has a store price yet.

Both arguments describe something real, but they concern different purchases: one is about the middle of the market, the other about the cheapest way in. The future, though, points in one direction. Both next-generation scenarios calculated here exceed today's corresponding totals, one based on the Helix report and the other on a rumored PS6 production cost.

Today's bill does not prove that gaming has become a hobby for the wealthy; only the trajectory supports that claim. To judge how far to trust it, start with where the rising hardware costs come from.

Microsoft gave the most specific explanation. Its August price-rise announcement also retired the 2TB model and described a steep increase in component costs.

Microsoft also said it expected another doubling by fall 2027. Sony and Nintendo, as noted above, did not single out memory in their announcements.

TrendForce offers a separate forecast. Its September 30 research release projects quarter-over-quarter increases of 10–15% for conventional DRAM contract prices, the prices manufacturers pay, and 15–20% for NAND in Q4 2026. It also warns that PC memory shipments could shrink in 2027 as manufacturers shift capacity toward servers.

For more on the component market, see why graphics cards are so expensive in 2026.

Ampere Analysis analyst Piers Harding-Rolls identified rising hardware costs as a major problem for the companies in his conversation with Fortune. For a console maker, the memory problem resembles a strategy game's essential resource becoming more expensive at every deposit: building another unit still works, but it now takes more resources.

If Microsoft's forecast holds, that pressure could also affect next-generation hardware. The first numbers have already appeared.

The largest number in our future column comes from Sebastian Herrera's October 20 report for Fortune. It describes an internal Xbox projection of $1,200–$1,800 for Helix if Microsoft does not subsidize the cost. It also reports plans for a next-generation handheld by the 2027 holiday season and a console by the 2028 holidays. Microsoft has announced neither the price nor those dates; Dexerto explicitly describes the figure as an unconfirmed MSRP.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma discussed collaborating with Microsoft's Windows teams on the project:

Putting that $1,200–$1,800 range into our package, plus today's $275.88 annual Ultimate cost and two $79.99 games (assuming the GTA 6 and Mario Kart World price becomes standard), gives $1,635.86–$2,235.86. At current earnings, that means 6.6–9.1 workdays, compared with 4.2 for our 2020 Xbox package.

Even the low end, $1,200, is already above today's $899.99 PS5 Pro, before buying a game or subscription.

Sony's case is more speculative still. It has not announced a PS6 price; the relevant rumor concerns production costs. Kepler_L2 estimated GDDR7 memory and SSD costs above $680 on NeoGAF. Earlier estimates attributed to the same leaker put the whole production cost at around $760 in March and $960 in late June. German outlet PCGH combined the newer memory estimate with an older estimate of roughly $300.50 for other components from Moore's Law Is Dead, reaching more than $980.50. Sony has confirmed none of this and buys memory through long-term contracts.

Production cost is not a retail price, so it enters the bill only as a scenario: if Sony sold PS6 at the rumored $980.50, today's subscription, games, and DualSense would bring the package to about $1,494.44, or 6.1 workdays.

PC's future column lacks even a price scenario. Kepler_L2 suggested that supply shortages could push an RTX 6060 to 2029; in the same discussion, the leaker doubted it would match PS6's performance. NVIDIA has not announced that card.

Hardware is only part of the package. The subscription beside it may change shape before the next console arrives.

Game Pass looks like an exception to rising hardware prices. Since April 21, 2026, US Ultimate costs $22.99 a month instead of $29.99, while PC Game Pass is $13.99 instead of $16.49. That announcement also said new Call of Duty games would stop arriving on release day and join around a year later.

The lower price has further conditions. Beginning in November 2026, Microsoft introduces monthly cloud-play limits of 15 hours for Ultimate, 10 for Premium, and five for Essential. The company estimates that about 4% of subscribers will be affected. Its September announcement promised extra-hour pricing in November. A cheaper subscription, a year's wait for new Call of Duty, and cloud time measured by the hour: the discount comes with an instruction manual.

Fortune, citing people familiar with the strategy, reports plans for another restructuring: a modular Game Pass with separate add-ons for console games, cloud gaming, and multiplayer within a tiered system. The report gives no prices, so our future Xbox scenario retains today's Ultimate rate.

Sony's subscription has not become cheaper. Annual Essential rose from $59.99 to $79.99, or 1.33 times. Extra is currently $134.99 a year and Premium $159.99; neither is included in our basic PlayStation package.

Adding those recurring charges to the hardware turns a console price into something easier to compare with a paycheck.

Our PlayStation package took 5.0 workdays in 2020 and takes 4.7 now, or 5.7 with PS5 Pro. The PS6 scenario takes about 6.1. Xbox goes from 4.2 in 2020 to 5.0 now, and 6.6–9.1 in the Helix scenario.

The standard PS5 package remains within a working week; Series X rounds to a full week. The Helix scenario exceeds it even at the low end, and passes nine days at the upper end. How many days of your own earnings would you trade for a console, subscription, and first year of games?

A soccer ball, meanwhile, still gets by without a subscription or GDDR7 memory. Just saying.

But measuring the cost in days' pay still doesn't tell us who can actually afford a new console, games, and a subscription.

The PS5 package used in this comparison costs $1,163.93 at current US prices. That is more than in 2020, but less after adjusting for inflation, and it takes fewer days' pay to afford. The Series X package has become more expensive even after inflation. Choosing PS5 Pro raises the budget further, while the selected PC build costs more than either console package before adding any games.

These calculations don't establish that gaming has become a hobby for the wealthy. Next-generation prices raise bigger concerns: both scenarios examined here push costs higher. But a rumored PS6 production cost and Xbox's internal projections don't determine what either console will cost in stores. How much will manufacturers absorb by subsidizing the hardware, and how much will they pass on to buyers?

What would you add to your own first-year gaming bill, and which expense is missing from this comparison?

US console, subscription, and PC figures in this comparison use the price snapshot of October 21, 2026, with separately dated PC sources.

Since April 2, 2026, US recommended prices are $649.99 for PS5, $599.99 for PS5 Digital Edition, and $899.99 for PS5 Pro. At launch in November 2020, PS5 was $499.99 and the Digital Edition $399.99.

Our selected standard PS5 package has not. A PS5, annual PS Plus, five games, and a second DualSense totaled $979.92 in November 2020, equivalent to $1,268.78 using CPI-U. Today's equivalent package is $1,163.93, and its cost at median earnings for full-time US employees fell from 5.0 to 4.7 workdays. The console alone slightly outpaced inflation: $499.99 then equals about $647.38 now, against a $649.99 price. Choosing PS5 Pro raises the package to $1,413.93, or 5.7 workdays, above the historical package.

Microsoft has announced neither a price nor a date. Fortune reports an internal projection of $1,200–$1,800 for consumers if Microsoft does not subsidize the cost, with the console planned for the 2028 holiday season.

Sony has not announced a price. A rumor attributed to Kepler_L2 puts memory and SSD costs above $680. Combining that with an older Moore's Law Is Dead estimate for other components, PCGH reaches more than $980.50 in production costs. Rumored production cost is not a store price.

In the October 21, 2026, US snapshot, Ultimate is $22.99 a month, reduced from $29.99 on April 21; PC Game Pass is $13.99. Annual PS Plus Essential is $79.99, Extra $134.99, and Premium $159.99. Ultimate's monthly cloud-play limit becomes 15 hours in November 2026.

Our standard PS5 package costs less than the selected PC configuration. PCWorld's approximately $1,000 build totaled $1,178.80 with shipping but before tax at February 2, 2026, prices, versus $1,163.93 for our PlayStation package with games and a subscription. Substituting August's median GPU listing and October's cheapest tracked memory kit gives VGTimes' hypothetical reconfiguration a cost of about $1,462.

NVIDIA has not announced an RTX 6060. Leaker Kepler_L2 suggested on NeoGAF that supply shortages could mean a 2029 launch.