The cheapest countries to buy an Xbox Series X

Remember back in the pandemic days when you had more chance of catching Covid than finding the Xbox Series X in stock somewhere? That’s all thankfully behind us, and the high-end console is now readily available from retailers, as long as you have the $500 plus tax to buy it. Premium gaming comes at a premium price, but that’s not how much the console costs in every country. This begs the question, which is the cheapest place in the world to buy the Xbox Series X? We’ve done the research and found you some answers.

Not only might you find that the Xbox is cheaper in another country, but there may also be tax savings to be made when you purchase abroad. An American buying it in the US has to pay sales tax, as do the residents of many countries when on home soil. But as a tourist, you might be able to claim this tax back or avoid it altogether. That’s a nice extra incentive.

Let’s get stuck into the data.

What are the cheapest countries to buy an Xbox Series X?

While we don’t have the price for every country, we did survey 25 of the biggest markets around the world, collecting the official price of the Xbox Series X. The table below shows the local price in each nation, as well as the equivalent amount in US dollars at the time of writing. We’ve ordered them from cheapest to most expensive.

Since we’re looking at these prices from a US resident’s perspective, we’ve added an approximate 10% sales tax onto the US figure in the table. This obviously varies across the country, but it’ll do for the purpose of the comparison. Note that many of the prices in other countries include the sales tax, so you might be able to get the console for as much as 15% less than the stated prices if you’re shopping on your travels. You certainly won’t be paying any more than these amounts.

Of these 25 countries, Japan is by far the cheapest place to buy the Xbox Series X. The retail price in the land of the rising sun works out to $398, which is around $150 less than you’re paying in the US. The next cheapest is Canada at $479, while South Korea, Australia, and Singapore aren’t far behind.

The most expensive place to buy the console is Brazil, where residents are paying the equivalent of a whopping $905 for the device. That seems excessive, but we can take some educated guesses as to why there is such a big price disparity — more on that below. The next two most expensive countries are Brazil’s fellow Latin American nations of Colombia and Mexico

We can see that, even after the sales tax, Americans are still getting a reasonable deal in the States. The vast majority of the countries on the list pay between $500 and $700 for the Xbox Series X, so the US is at the lower end of that range at $550.

Is that the best price I’ll get on the Xbox Series X abroad?

You might well find a better deal on the Xbox Series X in certain places. All we are comparing are the official retail prices of the console in each country, according to the Microsoft website. Having been on the market for over three years, it wouldn’t be surprising if lower prices were available by now.

Some third-party vendors are less scrupulous than others, so if you see the Xbox at an insanely low price, this should be raising some red flags in your head. Selling stolen goods or passing off second-hard merch as new is known to happen in all corners of the globe, and tourists who may never be back in the country to complain make prime targets for such underhanded behavior.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of genuine deals to be had out there, including in the US. For example, you can buy the Xbox Series X on Amazon for $449 right now. You just need to do your due diligence on any offer you find. The Amazon deal is from AntOnline, which is itself a reputable outlet. If you’re ever in any doubt, buying directly from Microsoft is the way to get the most peace of mind.

Should I buy the Xbox Series X from another country?

It’s not for us to tell you how to spend your money, but we’d suggest it probably isn’t worth the hassle. If you happen to find yourself in Japan and feel the urge to get a better price, it’s a matter for you, but you’ll need to free up some luggage space. On top of that, you might get a software configuration that’s less intuitive, plus a cable that needs an adapter to work in the US. The warranty may also be logistically impossible to use. Is all of that worth it to save less than $200?

In case it isn’t obvious, there certainly isn’t any value in traveling with the sole intention of buying a cheaper Xbox Series X. You’ll have spent way more than you stand to save by the time you’ve purchased your flight tickets.

Besides, we’ve already outlined that you might not have to pay the full retail price in the US — we’ve seen the console on sale for as little as $349 before. Your best bet in terms of getting a deal is holding out for a big sales event such as Prime Day or Black Friday.

Microsoft will have a price model for every market, which will take into account a myriad of factors. It will need to look at the huge number of costs associated with getting the Xbox Series X on the shelves in each country, such as import taxes, logistics, labor costs, and many more. On top of that will be the markup to work out how much profit can be squeezed from customers in that nation, which requires a consideration of consumer spending power. The final number will be the price in that country, and crunching that data will give very different results in each place.

Brazil is a good example of this. At first blush, it looks crazy that Brazilians might be paying more than double that of the Japanese. But Brazil has a huge import tax on tech goods not produced in the country, which can be as much as 100% of the device’s value. Microsoft wouldn’t be much of a business if it ate that tax and sold the machines at a loss, so it gets passed on to the consumer in the form of a much more expensive console.

The fact that we’re also converting all of the prices into dollars means that we were never going to get the exact same results anyway. Even if the price was originally the same in each country, which it isn’t, a week of the exchange rates fluctuating would start to show disparities. The price of the Xbox Series X actually went up in some countries last year, which could be down to the currency markets changing the equation we talked about at the beginning of this section. We’ll revisit this comparison from time to time to find out what effect exchange rates have on the running order of the list above.