Microsoft reevaluates next-gen Xbox plans to improve affordability while committing to ship console

Microsoft is reevaluating its plans for the next-generation Xbox console codenamed Project Helix and exploring radically different console business models, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Xbox strategy chief Matthew Ball said this week. “We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping, and we are very cognizant of the ways in which we need to change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it’s flexible,” Ball said in an interview with The Game Business.

Sharma told Fortune that hardware costs have created a crisis.

“On hardware, we are in a crisis right now, the entire industry is,” she said. Sharma said Microsoft must consider new approaches to console pricing and distribution. “We must think about other ways to think about the cost construction of a console.

We must think about how we create different plans, so more people can participate in the console,” she said. ” She added that the company is focusing on what is needed for console rather than the most premium high-performance device. “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,” Sharma said.

Sharma said the company will need to apply new techniques to compress storage and memory, empower customers to have very flexible storage offerings, and empower new types of games so they can fit on device. Microsoft discontinued its Xbox All Access financing program last year after many retailers pulled out.