Microsoft have revealed they’re struggling to make their new Xbox console (known as Project Helix) affordable due to a hardware “crisis”.
Last year, former Xbox boss Sarah Bond said the next-gen Xbox console was going to be a “very premium, very high-end curated experience” which fuelled speculation that Project Helix could cost at least $1000.
However earlier this year, new boss Asha Sharma told developers that she was looking to make the new console “affordable” and partly rolled back a massive price hike for subscription service Xbox Game Pass. Last night, she shared an open letter about the future of Xbox. “It is important to have both optimism and realism as we work to reset the business,” she wrote before talking about making the business more streamlined and focused, which is usually industry speak for laying off staff.
She revealed that Microsoft has spent “over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform, and hardware subsidy” over the past five years while their annual revenue has “declined nearly half a billion” during that same time. “Going forward, this cannot continue.”
