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After a series of high-profile PR faceplants, Xbox is back to talking about its next console, and I'm already worried about how much this thing is gonna cost.
This isn't the first confirmation we've had that Microsoft is indeed making another Xbox console, but after implementing considerable hardware and subscription price hikes that reportedly even impacted dev kits, it's good to have confirmation that a next-gen Xbox is even in the works at all.
What isn't as encouraging, for me at least, is the marketing language Xbox is using at the highest level. Xbox president Sarah Bond recently sat down with Mashable (timestamped here) and re-confirmed that there's a new console in development while strongly suggesting it'll cost a whole lot of money.
Responding to the suggestion that Xbox make a gaming console PC hybrid, Bond said:
"I can tell you that you're right, that the next-gen console is gonna be a very premium, very high-end, curated experience. You're starting to see some of the thinking that we have in [the Xbox ROG Ally handheld], but I don't want to give it all away."
It's a good time to remind y'all that the Xbox ROG Ally X, the most premium of the Microsoft-branded handheld family, costs $1000. Whether it was Asus or Xbox that decided on that price tag, Bond loosely comparing Microsoft's strategy with the next Xbox home console to the dearly expensive handheld line, not to mention her implicit agreement with Mashable that a gaming PC console hybrid is a good idea, is telling. And what it's telling me is that this freakin' console is gonna be at least $1000, isn't it?
I mean, we already have an $800 Xbox and a $1000 Xbox handheld, and with upward-trending manufacturing costs and general economic instability, it's not hard to conjure up images of the higher end Xbox in a family of new consoles being $1000 or more. The optimist in me wants to believe things will balance out on the consumer side at some point, hopefully before the next generation of Sony and Microsoft consoles, but the realist in me is prepping for new hardware in the quadruple digits.
Let's not think about that and just admire this list of upcoming Xbox Series X games we drew up.
