What a Console Costs After You Buy It

Three consoles, three very different bills once the box is open. The same activity — playing a game online with other people — costs $19.99 a year on a Switch 2 and $119.88 on an Xbox. Adding storage means shopping an open market on PS5, buying one proprietary card on Xbox, and replacing a card you may already own on Switch 2. Both of those are decided the day you pick the box, and neither moves when the console goes on sale.

Xbox raised its prices four weeks ago

Microsoft announced in June that “the price of XBOX consoles will increase by US$100 for 512 GB models and US$150 for 1 TB models,” effective August 1, 2026. The 2TB model is being discontinued.

This is worth holding onto through the autumn sales. A percentage off is calculated against the current price, so the same headline discount returns less money than it did in July, and a saving measured against the price you remember from last year will overstate what you actually get.

Online play: the same thing, at six times the price

The cheapest tier that lets you play with other people, at each platform’s published list price:

• Nintendo Switch Online — $19.99 a year for an individual, $34.99 for a family covering up to eight accounts. The Expansion Pack tier is $49.99 and $79.99.
• PlayStation Plus Essential — $79.99 every 12 months, or $10.99 monthly. Online multiplayer is included with every PS Plus tier.
• Xbox Game Pass Essential — $9.99 a month, including online console multiplayer. Xbox publishes no annual plan, so a year costs $119.88.

The comparison is not quite like for like, and that cuts in Xbox’s favour. Essential also carries a library of 50-plus games and unlimited cloud gaming; Nintendo’s $19.99 buys online play and a retro catalogue, and not much else. If you would have subscribed to a game library anyway, the gap narrows a great deal. If all you want is to play online with friends, Nintendo is the cheaper option by a wide margin.

Two of these three prices moved in the last year — Game Pass Ultimate came down, from $29.99 to $22.99, in April, and PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99. So treat any multi-year total as arithmetic on today’s price rather than a prediction: at current rates, six years of online play is roughly $120 on Switch, $480 on PlayStation and $719 on Xbox.

Storage: three systems that share nothing

Every console ships with less usable space than a modern game library needs, and each solves it differently.

PS5 is the open one. Sony accepts any “PCI-Express Gen4x4 supported M.2 NVMe SSD (Key M)” from 250GB to 8TB, recommends “5,500MB/s or faster,” and requires cooling — “a heatsink and a heat transfer sheet.” That means you are shopping the ordinary NVMe market, which is competitive and discounts hard in November. Check the physical limits: up to 25mm wide and 11.25mm thick, heatsink included.

Xbox is the closed one. USB drives cannot run current-generation Xbox games. Microsoft’s own storage comparison marks USB 3.1 HDD and SSD as “No” against playing games optimized for Series X|S, which leaves the Storage Expansion Card as the only way to add space those games will run from. A USB drive is still genuinely useful: older titles play from it directly — “you can continue to play your favorite Xbox One games, including backward-compatible Xbox 360 and original Xbox games, directly from the external hard drive” — and it is a cheap place to park current-generation games you are not playing, since moving one back is much faster than downloading it again.

Switch 2 asks you to buy again. Nintendo states the console “is only compatible with microSD Express cards,” and is explicit that cards from the original Switch that do not meet that standard cannot be used. Express is a newer, faster and dearer format than the microSD most people have in a drawer, so budget for a new card rather than assuming the old one carries over.

What to actually do

• Add the running cost to the sticker before comparing. Over a few years the subscription difference between these platforms is large enough to outweigh a good console discount, in either direction.
• Decide whether you are buying a game library or just online play. That single question is what makes Xbox’s $9.99 either the best value here or four times what you needed to spend.
• Budget the storage on day one. It is not optional for long, and on two of the three platforms you have exactly one thing you are allowed to buy.
• On Xbox, pair a cheap USB drive with the expansion card rather than buying the largest card. Old games play from USB, and new ones move back quickly.
• Do not assume your old microSD works in a Switch 2. Check for the word Express on the card, not just the capacity.
• Measure any Xbox discount against the August price, not the one you remember.

If you are weighing a handheld instead, our shortlist of gaming handhelds covers that side, and the $899 Xbox anniversary console is a worked example of paying for something other than performance.