# Xbox Series X25 Price and Release Date Leak: $899.99 on Black Friday, and Fans Are Already Arguing By Rafiqul Islam Rabbi · Gaming · Published Fri, 21 Aug 2026 16:51:05 GMT · Updated Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:51:21 GMT Source: The Current Tribune — https://currenttribune.com/article/xbox-series-x25-price-release-date-leak The prettiest Xbox in years might also be the most expensive one Microsoft has ever put on a shelf. A fresh leak pins the 25th anniversary Xbox Series X25 at €899.99 in Europe — with a matching $899.99 expected in the US — and lands it on November 27, which happens to be Black Friday. If that holds, the translucent green console celebrating a quarter century of Xbox will cost exactly $400 more than the standard Series X did at launch in 2020, for identical performance. Microsoft showed the X25 off in June during its summer showcase and then went quiet on the two things everybody wanted: price and date. That silence is apparently over, courtesy of a French deals outlet with a long track record of pulling unannounced product listings out of retailer back-ends before the marketing team is ready. The same leaker nailed the controller details earlier this week, and those are now expected to be confirmed at Gamescom within days. ### What the leak actually claims The report covers the full Limited Edition collection — console and matching pad bundled together — rather than the console alone. Here’s the shape of it: Detail What’s reported Console price €899.99 in Europe, $899.99 estimated in the US Release date November 27, 2026 (Black Friday) What’s in the box 1TB Series X with disc drive + X25 Special Edition controller Controller sold separately $79.99 / £74.99 / €79.99 / CA$99.99 Controller pre-orders August 26, 2026 Controller release October 20, 2026 Console pre-orders Still unknown The European figure is the one the leaker says they’ve actually verified. The US number is an educated extrapolation, and UK pricing hasn’t surfaced at all — which, based on how the last round of Xbox price changes shook out over there, is not a comforting silence. ### The hardware hasn’t changed. At all. This is the part worth being blunt about. The X25 is a standard Xbox Series X in a costume. Same custom Zen 2 CPU, same 12-teraflop GPU, same 16GB of GDDR6, same 1TB SSD, same disc drive. Nobody hoping this anniversary model would sneak in a spec bump or a bigger drive is getting one. What you’re paying the premium for is the shell, and credit where it’s due — the shell is fantastic. Microsoft went with translucent “OG Green,” a direct callback to the see-through hardware aesthetic that defined the early 2000s, and it’s the first time a Series X has ever been translucent. The X on the front lights up green when you power it on, mimicking the original console’s boot sequence. There’s a 25th Anniversary badge on the face and a handful of small design nods scattered around that Microsoft has been coy about, promising “hidden surprises” for people who look closely. #### The controller is arguably the better buy The X25 Special Edition pad is the same translucent green, but the details are sharper. The ABXY buttons use the original color layout. The bumpers reference the black and white buttons from the Duke, the enormous first-generation controller that everyone made fun of and now costs a fortune on eBay. The back case and battery door are fully transparent, revealing a classic Xbox logo tucked inside. At $79.99 it’s priced in line with Microsoft’s other limited-run pads, which is to say it’s expensive for a gamepad but not unreasonable by 2026 standards. It also ships a month before the console, on October 20, with pre-orders opening August 26 — the same day Microsoft’s Gamescom broadcast kicks off in Cologne. Read that as the announcement date. ### Why $899.99 stings more than it should Context matters here, and the context is grim. On August 1, Microsoft raised Xbox prices for the third time in roughly fifteen months. The 1TB Series X with a disc drive went from $649.99 to $799.99. The all-digital model hit $749.99. The Series S climbed to $499.99 for the 512GB version. The 2TB Galaxy Black edition was quietly killed off rather than pushed past a thousand dollars. Microsoft’s explanation was unusually candid: storage and memory prices have more than doubled and then some, driven by AI data centers hoovering up every DRAM module on earth, and the company expects them to double again by late 2027. Consoles are traditionally sold at or below cost, which means the hikes aren’t padding margins — they’re limiting bleeding. Reports from people close to the hardware business suggest Microsoft is still losing money on each Series X even at $799. So the X25’s rumored $100 premium over the standard model is, in isolation, a completely normal special edition markup. The problem is the number it’s stacking on top of. A console that launched at $499.99 now leads to an anniversary edition asking nine hundred dollars. In Europe, that’s the same €899.99 Sony wants for a PS5 Pro — a machine with 2TB of storage and meaningfully better rendering, though no disc drive. #### The community reaction is split down the middle Enthusiast forums have settled into two camps, and both make sense. One side is straightforwardly angry: paying a premium for a paint job during the worst console pricing environment in the industry’s history reads as tone-deaf, especially when third-party controller makers are already selling translucent green pads for under sixty bucks. The other side isn’t really buying a console. They’re buying a collectible. Limited-edition Xbox hardware has a habit of vanishing within hours and reappearing at double the price, and a 25th anniversary model with a light-up X is about as collectible as this stuff gets. For that buyer, $899.99 with a matching controller included is less a purchase than an investment thesis. ### The Black Friday timing is a real gamble Launching on the single busiest shopping day of the year is a strange fit for a limited-run luxury item. Black Friday is a discount holiday. Dropping a $900 console into a week where every other piece of gaming hardware is marked down invites an unflattering comparison at exactly the wrong moment. There’s a more cynical read, though, and it’s probably the right one: Microsoft doesn’t need this to compete on price. It needs it to sell out. Putting a scarce anniversary console in front of the largest shopping audience of the year, with holiday gifting in full swing, is how you guarantee a sold-out headline by Saturday morning. Whether that’s a win depends on how many units actually exist. ### What Microsoft still hasn’t said Plenty. There’s no confirmed console pre-order date, no UK or Australian pricing, no word on production numbers, and no official acknowledgment of any of the leaked figures. Microsoft’s only public commitment remains what it said in June: the collection arrives in select markets in November. Some fans have already skipped the queue entirely. Attendees at Xbox’s summer FanFest with the right pass were promised both the console and controller as a gift, which means a small number of X25 units are already spoken for before pre-orders exist. ### What This Means Treat the $899.99 figure as very likely but not final, and the November 27 date as the more solid of the two claims. This particular leaker’s hit rate is strong enough that a full walk-back would be surprising, and the Gamescom broadcast on August 26 is the obvious venue for Microsoft to make it official. If you want one, the practical advice is simple: the controller pre-order on August 26 is your first real test of demand. If that sells out in minutes — and it probably will — assume the console will be worse, and have a retailer account logged in and ready the moment console pre-orders surface. And if you just want an Xbox Series X to play games on, buy the black one. It’s a hundred dollars cheaper; it’s the same machine, and it will be sitting on a shelf in December when the green one isn’t.