XBOX to Try Radically Different Business Models to Keep Project Helix Affordable

If you have been wondering how XBOX will approach the price tag of Project Helix considering the global memory crunch situation, CEO Asha Sharma has provided a detailed explanation as to what the company needs to do to keep the price in affordable territory.

XBOX to make radical changes to business models to keep Project Helix price in check amid memory crisis

Speaking during a Fortune event, Sharma pointed directly at rising memory and storage costs as one of the biggest challenges facing console makers today (via VGC).

“Look, on hardware, we are in a crisis right now. The entire industry is,” Sharma said. “There’s a shortage of memory and storage, and the costs are exponential. They are usually at this point in the generation about 50% of the cost, and we’re seeing they’re up 2.75x, they’re up 50% since they started, they’re going to be up effectively 7.5x.”

Rather than relying solely on hardware pricing, Sharma suggested Microsoft is exploring broader solutions.

“Pricing is a lever, of course, but we must think about other options as well. We must think about other ways to think about the cost construction of the console. We must think about how we create different plans so more people can participate in the console.”

She added, “We must think about partnerships that will allow us to have better distribution and reach, and we must think about the experiences that we’re creating outside of that as well to reach new audiences.”

In previous appearances in the public space, Asha Sharma also said that XBOX needs to “innovate” in order to keep Project Helix’s price in check. The recent comments largely hint at the same approach. However, she also adds that the company will keep looking at new business models.

“I think that we will continue to look at new business models. I think [that is] what is needed for console rather than just the most premium, high-performance console in the world,” she said.

“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.”

One area XBOX may target is storage flexibility

Speaking of Helix itself, Sharma reiterated that the system is still being built around high-end capabilities and support for PC games.

“But there’s material work to do to make sure that it is available to the people that want to play. And so we’re working on that,” she said.

“For us, I think that we have to think very differently about storage and memory going forward,” Sharma explained. “We will have to apply new techniques so that we can compress that. We will have to empower customers to have very flexible storage offerings. We will have to empower new types of games so they can fit on device.”

“And so there’s gonna be a lot of innovation. This will take years, not days, not weeks, but we’ll go through it together with the community,” she further added.

As of now, Microsoft has confirmed that Project Helix will run both Xbox and PC games. What remains unclear is whether those “radically different business models” involve subscriptions, modular hardware, cloud integration, or something entirely new. We’ll learn more about Project Helix as Xbox is expected to share more details on it later this year.