Xbox Warns About Next-Gen Console Prices as They Explore “Radically Different Business Models”
By now, you must have heard about Asha Sharma, Xbox’s new CEO, who has made amazing changes to the brand. And the most recent change is an interesting one. While we didn’t see much Project Helix during Xbox’s summer showcase, we did see Xbox warn about next-gen console prices, with Sharma hinting that the company will need to be creative to help fans afford consoles.
The cost of consoles has only risen lately, thanks to the rising costs of components due to AI. Back in May, Sony announced they were raising the PlayStation 5 by another $100, and Valve’s handheld console, the Steam Deck, just got a price raise by a whopping $300.
With the prices slowly climbing, players are realizing gaming is becoming unaffordable. Which is why Sharma actively planning to ensure fans can still buy the next-gen console means so much.
“We must think about other ways to think about the cost of construction of the console; we must think about how we create different plans, so more people can participate in the console,” she recently told Fortune during one of its live events. “We must think about partnerships that will allow us to have better distribution and reach, and we must think about the experiences that we’re creating outside of that as well to reach new audiences.”
Sharma continued, saying, “We will continue to look at new business models. I think it is needed for the console, rather than just the most premium, high-performance console in the world.”
“I think we’ve reached a point where it will be hard to imagine that mass audiences can afford thousands of dollars to spend on a console generation. And so I think we will start to see radically different business models that we never expected start to come into orbit later this year.”
Given Project Helix, which is supposedly a powerful console that also plays PC games, it might be shocking to hear Sharma talk about this plan. But for those who are nervous about the continuous price hikes in the gaming world, this might be promising, especially since she seems more in tune with players than most other companies out there right now.
“I think that we have to think very differently about storage and memory going forward. We will have to apply new techniques so that we can compress that.”
“We will have to empower customers to have very flexible storage offerings. We will have to empower new types of games, so they can fit on devices, and so there’s going to be a lot of innovation.”
