If you’ve been an Xbox fan for a while, you’re probably sick to your stomach from all the ups and downs over the last 12ish years.
Every time it seems that the cloudy days of Xbox are over, the weather forecast shows another 100 days of doom and gloom. Look, do I think the Xbox brand will die anytime soon? No, I think Xbox has so many popular properties like Call of Duty, Candy Crush, etc., that bring in a ton of money that they will always have enough of a heartbeat to keep on living. As a publisher. But what about as a platform? As a console manufacturer? This is where things get bleak.
How many units has the Xbox Series X/S Sold?
Acording to an insider, as of 10 months ago, the Xbox Series X/S has sold less than 30 million units. This is a console that came out in November of 2020, and it’s only sold this much. You can take this with a huge grain of salt, but it’s hard not to imagine that it’s around this ballpark.
You don’t need insider information to know that out of the big 3 (PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox), Xbox is dead last. Not even the most die-hard Xbox fans will argue against that.
Compare that to the PlayStation 5, a console that came out in the same week as the Xbox Series X/S, which has currently sold more than 93 million units. Also compare that to the Nintendo Switch 2, a console that came out just one year ago, which has already sold 19.86 million units.
Let’s assume that this insider information is either wrong or outdated, and let’s give Xbox the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say that it actually sold 40 million units. That still wouldn’t be half of what the PS5 has sold, and that’s barely double what the Switch 2 has sold.
These are dire numbers, folks. At what point does Microsoft just cut its losses and announce that Xbox will no longer sell hardware?
That’s the thing, though. We know Xbox will be in the console business for at least one more generation.
Xbox’s Next Console
Codenamed Project Helix, this is Xbox’s next console. However, and I don’t want to be an needless Debbie Downer, it looks like that is already running into some problems. In a post on Xbox Wire, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has talked about the future.
We are in a hardware component crisis. When I joined as CEO in February, the price we paid for console storage components was over 2x as high as we paid last fall. These costs have since doubled again. And as we plan for the 2027 holiday season, we expect another significant increase, taking us over 5x the prices we paid only two years earlier. Memory costs have followed a broadly similar trajectory. While the entire industry is facing a components crisis, we believe we have been impacted more greatly than many of our peers due to the choices we made over the last half decade. We are currently unable to make as many consoles as players want to buy, and we need a new business model and partnerships for hardware as we remain committed to Helix.
The one good thing about all this is that she reititarated that Xbox is commited to Project Helix. I do believe that this console is coming out, but what will that look like? It could be a limited release, or it could be released pricier than we expect.
But unless something drastically changes in the next year in a half, what’s to stop Helix from suffering the same fate as the Series X/S? What guarantee is there that this console will be a success when the last one wasn’t? There isn’t one.
I think it’s time to face the music and realize that Xbox is not long for the console world. Don’t get me wrong, I love Xbox and I think that PlayStation being the sole winner of the console war would not be a good thing (not counting Nintendo because I feel like they’re in their own, separate lane). But if I’m telling the truth, I think Xbox is going to bow out of the console race sooner rather than later.
This is all speculation. But the one thing that needs no speculation is that something within Xbox needs to change because things aren’t looking good.
Read More
- Should the MCU Reboot After the Avengers: Secret Wars?
- 5 Characters Who Should Be in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
- 5 Characters Who Need to Be in Mortal Kombat 3
Also published here