All machines break. Those of us who have owned enough hardware over the years will be familiar with the frustration that comes with a dead or malfunctioning system, and that’s before you get to the hassle of looking up part numbers, scouring YouTube tutorials, and digging that screwdriver set out from the back of your desk drawers.
Right to repair legislation in both the US and the EU has at least made inroads into ensuring that devices are repairable and that parts are easier to obtain. That being said, how-to website iFixit has recently announced that it’s selling genuine Microsoft parts for Xbox consoles—which sounds dandy at first, but some of the prices are of the teeth-sucking variety.
For example, at the time of writing, there are several Xbox Series X US motherboards listed with the “Genuine Microsoft Part” tag, ranging from $449 to just shy of $700—although all are currently out of stock.
Still, when a brand new Xbox Series X 1 TB edition costs $500, it’s difficult to see why you’d go to the hassle of paying a significant amount extra for a replacement board instead of throwing your borked console away and buying a whole new one.
However, there are a couple of things to note here before we start pulling out the pitchforks and gnashing our teeth. First, many components more likely to need replacing than the motherboard are available on iFixit for quite reasonable prices, although they’re not listed as genuine Microsoft components.
A Series X power supply replacement kit will set you back a mere $75, and that’s a pretty good deal on a part that’s likely got a limited shelf life (although it is a used model to begin with).
And secondly, while offering genuine Microsoft components for replacement initially seems like a boon, it’s important to remember that consoles are normally sold as loss leaders.
That means they’re actually more expensive to make than the price they’re sold for, in an effort to bring customers into an ecosystem where they’ll go on to buy games, services and more that Microsoft (in the case of the Xbox) will be hoping to profit from further down the chain.
So it’s no surprise that official Microsoft parts are expensive, although I can’t be the only one who raised my eyebrows when checking the listings. More expensive, sure, but when one component costs more than the entire console, it does shine a light on some potential pitfalls of the right to repair movement beyond the legislative challenges of enforcing it in the first place.
Should an Xbox Series X motherboard be what you require, it’s worth mentioning that a quick scout of eBay reveals several salvaged components for sale, although the usual sight-unseen private seller caveats apply.
Still, if my Xbox was refusing to boot and I’d identified it was the motherboard to blame, I think I’d probably take my chances with a used unit to keep costs down—even if it meant potentially getting my fingers burnt in the end.
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