Ex-Blizzard Boss: $1,800 Xbox 'Will Never Sell'

Ever look at your gaming budget and think, 'Man, I hope the next console costs as much as a used car'? Yeah, neither has anyone else. And that's exactly the point former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra is making about the rumored price of the next Xbox.

A recent report from Fortune claims Microsoft is internally projecting that its next home console will cost consumers somewhere between $1,200 and $1,800—assuming Xbox doesn't subsidize the hardware and eat a potential loss. To put that in perspective, the PS5 and Xbox Series X launched less than six years ago at $500. Even with global memory shortages driving component costs up, $1,800 is a wild number.

Ybarra took to Twitter to voice his disbelief, and he didn't mince words. 'I find this very hard to believe,' he said. 'A console is a mass-audience device and you need great games and a low entry price (IMO $399 to $499). A console at the prices rumored below will never sell meaningful units to be of any value vs. alternatives. Zero.' He even went a step further: 'I wouldn't release it at all.'

So what does he suggest instead? Simple: stick with what you've got. 'Stick with PS5 Pro/Series X until prices normalize. The capabilities of those boxes are both fine for 99% of the audience,' Ybarra said. 'No one is screaming I need a more powerful console right now and I believe tons of optimization can and is happening on those platforms.'

He pointed to Xbox's recent announcement that its machine-learning upscaler FSR 4.1 is coming to Xbox Series X and S as an example of that optimization. And he's got a point—players are already feeling the squeeze from rising costs on everything from fuel to housing to insurance to ground beef. Entertainment budgets are getting tighter, not looser.

The timing here is interesting, too. Xbox is in the middle of a big reset under new CEO Asha Sharma, complete with layoffs. What the company does with its next big machine will answer a lot of questions about how it plans to compete with Sony and Nintendo going forward. Sony and Nintendo face similar pressures, though Nintendo just released the Switch 2 last year, so it's in a slightly different spot.

If the idea of an $1,800 Xbox that doesn't even run physical games makes you want to hug your current console, you're not alone. Ybarra's advice is pretty clear: enjoy the hardware you have and wait for prices to calm down. Will you be sticking with your current-gen console for the foreseeable future? What do you think?