Remember when rumors of the next-generation consoles would fill our hearts with hope and joy, wondering at the many potential new adventures that lay in wait? Raising the graphical bar is nice and all, but there was also that prospect of a clean slate coexisting with massive leaps in our favorite franchises. Maybe some returning IPs, adorning stunning new forms. Fresh stories and gameplay mechanics that simply weren’t possible on older hardware.
Suffice it to say that this generation has done an excellent job beating those hopes and dreams out of us, whether it’s Xbox’s constantly ping-ponging business strategies or PlayStation favoring live-service (and failing miserably at it). But oh well, there’s always the next generation, right? Sure, it’s probably not justified with how this one barely began, but a big do-over is probably what we need.
Well, for the first time in a long time, enthusiasm about the next generation of consoles, whether it’s Xbox’s Project Helix or Sony’s rumored PS6, is far from the “happy happy joy joy” of previous eras. Memory shortages, leading to rising costs for RAM, GPUs, SSDs and whatnot, are to blame, and every other month, it feels like a new rumor warns us that it’s much worse than we initially thought. See insider Kepler_L2 claiming that the PS6’s RAM and NAND alone cost $680 to manufacture, which means the console, previously rumored to retail for $1,000, could end up costing more.
However, Xbox seemingly decided to up the ante. All those rumors claiming that the PS6 and Project Helix were locked in for Holiday 2027? Next Xbox in 2028, apparently. You’re welcome.
“Wait, what?” is probably your reaction. It was certainly mine when a new story by Fortune went live. While serving as a profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and how she’s progressed since taking on the role, it also highlighted several upcoming plans, such as releasing a “next-generation handheld device” by Holiday 2027 while the next console debuts in the same window but in 2028.
Now, it’s worth noting that a good chunk of the story relies on reports from other sources. Some of them talked about the upcoming overhaul for Game Pass that would allow for selecting features à la carte, whether it’s cloud gaming, multiplayer or “add-ons for console-only games,” as they put it. When this will go live, how much it will cost, and whatnot haven’t been revealed.
It’s the other part, about hardware costs, that you’ll really want to sit down for. The new console is internally projected to cost $1,200, which is bad news. The good news? Well, there is no good news, because that’s the lower-end estimate. At the highest end, it could set you back by $1,800. So you could be stuck paying more than twice as much as the Series X’s launch price or nearly four times that. Remember all those fears about potentially paying $1,000 for a new console? Xbox seemingly took that as a challenge, and decided to go for nearly $2,000.
But I digress; such a range, even projected, means it’s seemingly unsure about what costs could look like in the future. If there’s one thing that can be said for certain, it’s that the days of relatively accessible console hardware are pretty much over. Don’t even get us started on how this could affect pricing in other countries. Xbox in Japan has been pretty much non-existent for decades at this point – this may finally spur the division to not even bother at all, and simply put it on the back burner. How many other regions will it view through the same lens? What’s the possibility that it simply restricts hardware to what it sees as more “lucrative” regions? And does it really believe that those in the United States, Canada and Europe – essentially its main markets – would be willing to pay so much for a new console?
That could explain why it’s going with this “next-gen handheld” first. On the surface, it could be much cheaper to build compared to the console, and with recent changes to cloud gaming hours, this could be the division trying to stake its claim in the handheld gaming market yet again. It seems things have been going less than smoothly, however, as the Xbox and Windows teams apparently clashed over what it should run on, to the point where one executive on the former reportedly wanted to scrap the project. Xbox is now “largely controlling” the operating system, it seems, so interpret that how you’d like.
Leaving aside that the Xbox Ally and Ally X didn’t necessarily set the handheld PC market on fire, the biggest takeaway from this feature/report is that the next gen could very well be delayed to late 2028. That would mean an eight-year-long console generation, and to say that it’s barely felt that long would be an understatement. Will PlayStation follow suit and delay the PS6 to that same point? Will it launch the rumored PS6 handheld early to counter Xbox? Imagine if both pieces of hardware dropped next year. Not only would that effectively hamper Xbox’s handheld, but it would give a one-year lead to PlayStation on the console front, and with how thoroughly it’s dominated this generation, you have to wonder how Xbox would mount a comeback.
Interestingly, Kepler_L2 also weighed in on the potential cost of the PS6, alleging that the bill of materials is approximately $200 less than for Magnus, the code name for the Project Helix console. Depending on the response to its own hardware, I could see Xbox subsidizing the console before launch, if only to compete against the PS6 in some way. It may not help, but pricing Helix higher definitely won’t. Comparatively, PlayStation doesn’t need to go the same route, especially with CEO Hiroki Totoki noting that the company doesn’t want to sell hardware at “significant losses.”
Granted, this means it could cost $1,000 to $1,600 instead of $1,200 to $1,800 – assuming the insider is going by the same projections – but that’s not an insignificant amount. And either way, it only further highlights how thoroughly cooked the next-generation is. The worst part is that neither company can simply rely on current-gen hardware to really carry the market. Sales have fallen significantly over previous years, with Xbox hitting an all-time low in the United States for the year as of August.
Despite nearing 100 million PS5 consoles shipped, PlayStation hit its lowest sales for the same period since 2013. Even if either company wanted to cancel their next-gen plans, current-gen hardware sales are going to get worse before they get better, unless Grand Theft Auto 6 proves to be the rising tide that lifts all boats, and somehow saves the market. And how long that will last is another matter entirely.
I can’t really blame either manufacturer because they were effectively blindsided by the global memory shortages, which also ate into their current hardware sales due to price hikes. Whichever way you slice it, console gaming has a dark period ahead, where much of the audience that helped build up PlayStation – and which Xbox is no doubt counting on to revive its hardware hopes for the future – will be outpriced, without either really earning that much more for each console. It really is that dire, but like a train crash in slow motion, there’s simply no turning back.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
