Back in August, Sony announced that it was increasing the price of the PlayStation 5 by £30/€50 for both the Digital Edition and the Standard Edition of the console. At the time, Microsoft and Nintendo announced that they had no plans to follow suit, but last month the price of the Xbox Series S/X was raised in Japan.
Now it seems that the price increases have reached Europe as well, because on the Swedish Microsoft Store the Xbox Series X has been increased by 500 Swedish crownes (equivalent to £40/€50) and now costs 6195 crownes (equivalent to £498/€561), and the Xbox Series S has also received a slightly smaller increase. The high price tag is partly due to Sweden's so-called chemical tax on all electronics (PlayStation 5 costs 7290 crownes as a comparison), but the increase is probably a result of a combination of the highest inflation in the EU and a weakened Swedish currency.
Whether other countries will follow suit is unclear at the time of writing, but it feels like price hikes are creeping ever closer in our part of the world as well.