Microsoft offers $375 trade-in at Best Buy for inactive consoles

Microsoft is offering up to $375 in Best Buy gift cards to Xbox Series X owners who haven’t powered on their console in months — and it’s sending the pitch directly via email. The outreach, confirmed by multiple recipients and spotted by Notebook Check, targets inactive users with a blunt ask: trade in your dust-collecting Series X at Best Buy for credit toward a new device or accessories.

No purchase required. Just bring the console in, and proof of ownership, presumably, to any US Best Buy location that accepts trade-ins. The $375 cap matches roughly 47% of the Series X’s $799 MSRP. Actual offers will vary based on condition and model year, per standard trade-in practice.

Microsoft has not publicly explained the campaign’s timing or goals. But the move arrives amid a global shortage of DDR5 RAM, a key component in next-gen consoles, which has reportedly strained production capacity across the industry. That context makes sense of the incentive: rather than wait for new hardware to clear supply bottlenecks, Microsoft appears to be accelerating secondary-market circulation.