This year has been troubling for Xbox hardware. Recently, Microsoft announced a price hike in the U.S. that’s due to go into effect this October, bringing the price all the way up to $649.99. Now, it seems a retailer is dropping their Xbox inventory altogether. Noted by keen-eyed shoppers across the internet, it seems Costco has removed all mentions of Xbox from its online storefronts.
When searching for Xbox on the site within the United States or the United Kingdom, no results appear. When I checked for myself on the U.S. side, I was greeted with “We're sorry. We were not able to find a match.” Welp, that sucks. As someone who already owns a few Xbox consoles and generally buys digital content, I would buy Xbox currency cards on a regular basis at Costco.
Every Christmas, I’d stock up on $100 worth to split amongst myself and a few friends. While I may still be able to grab this deal if I walk into the store, I haven’t checked recently. Maybe it’s time I go pick up some cheap Xbox currency before it’s gone in store as well, if it’s even there at all — I don’t know!
Either way, it’s clear that Costco is not currently looking to support Xbox and Microsoft. Whether that’s on Microsoft or Costco is yet to be determined.
With the ever-growing price of both Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, I can’t help but imagine the drive for buying an Xbox is at an all-time low, even as its game sales reach new heights everywhere but at home.
By volume, Costco is the third-largest retailer globally. They find themselves behind the juggernauts of Walmart and Amazon, respectively.
While these storefronts still list Xbox-branded devices and games, Costco's delisting of the products means fewer eyes on the world of Microsoft offerings. Which, no matter how you want to slice it, isn’t good.
What's the cause?
We can only speculate as to why Xbox offerings have been removed from Costco’s website, but there are some more likely reasons.
First, as I mentioned previously, Microsoft recently announced new prices for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles, at $649.99 and $399.99, respectively.
As a result, it’s entirely possible that Costco has pulled its online inventory until these prices go into effect on October 3, 2025. With a little over a week to go, they could be saving the inventory they have for the latest pricing — a very likely scenario.
While it doesn’t answer the question of why they’ve been pulled from the U.K., these pricing changes will only take effect in the United States. A member of our team was able to verify that Costco has not removed its Xbox offerings from its Canadian storefront.
Other reasons, as speculated before, could be the middling sales of the console, and Costco has decided to start dropping Xbox products as a result. While this reason is far less likely, it remains a possibility.
Multiple reasons against this would start with the fact that Xbox sells best in the United States. Pulling it from here but not Canada would make little to no sense if that was the cause.
Not to mention, the timing behind the removal is also astronomically poor. With holiday sales looming in the coming weeks and months, pulling the console just before the best-selling months would be a strange business decision to make.
Then again, I’m just a journalist.
With all that said, it seems most likely that this entire situation is being driven by ongoing tariffs in the United States. This, along with other pricing scenarios, doesn’t seem to be going away for the foreseeable future.
I’ve reached out to Costco for a comment and will update as new information becomes available.
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