Microsoft struggles to price next Xbox amid memory crisis

Microsoft is facing a memory pricing squeeze its AI ambitions have helped create, making it hard to offer a cutting-edge Xbox at a price ordinary buyers can afford. The next console, codenamed Helix, will deliver "leading-end performance," new Xbox boss Asha Sharma said, but other comments suggest Microsoft is lowering expectations about the device's hardware.

Sharma argued the industry needs "new business models" rather than "just the most premium, high-performance console in the world," and warned it will be hard for mass audiences to pay thousands of dollars for a console. She predicted "radically different business models" will come into orbit later this year.

On storage and memory she said Microsoft must "think very differently," pointing to game compression, flexible storage offerings and enabling new types of games to fit on-device. Those proposals leave practical questions: Xbox already supports flexible storage options, and what it means to "empower new types of games" remains unclear.

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