Microsoft raised the price of Xbox consoles across Europe at midnight on 1 August, by up to €200 and up to 40%, in the largest single increase in the console’s history. The stated reason is a shortage of memory components.

The actual reason is 4-1.

The mechanism is straightforward and has been executed competently. A price increase applied to Belgium alone would have been noticed immediately, investigated by the European Commission, and raised at the level of trade policy within a week. A price increase applied to all of Europe attracts no such attention. It is simply pricing. Nobody investigates pricing.

Four hundred and fifty million people are therefore being charged for something eleven million of them did in Seattle on 7 July.

The figures support this reading. The United States announced its own increase in June: $100 on the smaller model, $150 on the larger. Europe’s figures were not published at that time. They were not published for six weeks. They appeared at midnight on 1 August: €150 and €200.

Component shortages do not discriminate by continent. Memory is manufactured in the same factories, from the same silicon, and shipped to the same distributors. A shortage that raises American prices by $100 and European prices by €200 is not a shortage. It is a decision, taken by a person, in a room, who has seen the highlights.

The six-week delay is the tell. A number withheld for six weeks is not a number that was still being calculated. It is a number that was being sat on.

The Belgian Ministry of Economic Affairs has declined to comment. Sources within the building note only that Belgium has now been assigned a substandard training pitch in Los Angeles, watched its opponent’s president bomb three countries in 48 hours, and been charged an additional €200 for a games console, all within a single calendar month, and that no formal accusation has been made in any of the three cases because no formal accusation is necessary.

There is one consolation. Of all the Europeans now paying €799.99 for an Xbox Series X, only the Belgians are getting value for money. Spain won a World Cup and pays the same. France reached a semi-final and pays the same. Italy did not qualify and pays the same, which is the single greatest injustice in European consumer history.

Belgium scored four goals in Seattle. At €200, that is €50 a goal.

We would pay it again.