At E3 2017, Microsoft officially announced Xbox One X - previously known by its code-name, Project Scorpio. The company stated that the "world"s most powerful console" will be sold for $499, starting on November 7 this year.
While many believed the price tag to be too steep, keeping in view that Sony"s PlayStation 4 Pro costs $399 - and ignoring the fact that it"s underpowered compared to the Xbox One X - it appears that Microsoft won"t be making a profit off of selling its latest piece of hardware at all.
Talking to Business Insider, Microsoft"s Xbox head Phil Spencer revealed that the company isn"t expecting make money from selling Xbox One X units. Instead, it"s banking on getting profit from selling games. Spencer said that:
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.
Spencer didn"t go into details as to whether the Xbox One X will be sold at a loss or if costs are being balanced out exactly, it isn"t all too surprising that solely selling the company"s latest console won"t be the source of revenue. As we saw at E3 this year, the Xbox One X packs considerably powerful internals, including 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, an SoC with 7 billion transistors, and a custom-made AMD CPU. And with having the power to run "true 4K" games, along with being the smallest Xbox yet, there is no doubt that it"s expensive to construct.
But while Microsoft is hoping to make money from selling games and services, many people - including our readers - have complained about the lack of exclusives on the console. That said, the company did announce a diverse range of titles, that will "run great" on the Xbox One X, so it will be interesting to see if that becomes a selling point for Microsoft"s latest console.
Source: Business Insider