E3 2017: Microsoft Won’t Make Money From The XBox One X
The XBox One X will be both the most powerful and the most ridiculously expensive console in the world. But despite that large price towering over everything else on the market, Microsoft won’t be making a dime off it.
This is according to XBox boss Phil Spencer, who responded to a question from Business Infomer. The website asked if Microsoft would be making any kind of a profit on each XOX sold. Spencer’s one-word answer was “No.”
“So, you’re taking a loss?” the reporter followed up with. “I didn’t answer it that way,” stated Spencer. The only interpretation we can take from this is that MS is breaking even.
It is what you think — the old razors-and-blades strategy that the company has tried before. “I don’t want to get into all the numbers, but in aggregate you should think about the hardware part of the console business is not the money-making part of the business. The money-making part is in selling games.”
But, ah, hold on there. The XBox One X will have no exclusives; it’s simply a fancier version of the first console that happens to make the games prettier. The people buying games for the new console would have bought them for the original one anyway. You would think if Microsoft just sold the XBox One as-is they would wind up with more money, not less.
However, if Spencer does mean they’re breaking even — if the cost of producing an XBox One X and the return revenue from each sale truly comes to the same amount of cash, this means everything should financially remain exactly the same as if the upgraded machine had never come out. Mathematically, the XBox One X is completely and utterly pointless.
Microsoft’s pointless new console will be in stores November 7, 2017.