Fortune Points to a $1,200-$1,800 Price Range for Microsoft's 2028 Console
A wide-ranging Fortune profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma alludes to a dual release strategy for Microsoft's upcoming gaming hardware: a next-generation handheld device planned by the end of next year, and a 2028 holiday-season console that could cost between $1,200 and $1,800.
That would be historically high for the game console market, even after accounting for inflation, and it reflects a new normal: a slowdown in Moore's Law and AI-driven component shortages mean cutting-edge gaming hardware just isn't as cheap as it used to be.
The current market makes the top of that range look less freakish. This year the Steam Machine broke the $1,000 starting price, the PlayStation 5 Pro, whose technology is two years old, now goes for $900, and the six-year-old Xbox Series X starts at $750.
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Microsoft announced Project Helix in March as hardware that will play both Xbox and PC games, which suggests a comparison the console-price argument usually skips: a box that runs PC games is competing with gaming PCs as well, and that framing changes what counts as expensive.
Or treat the range as a planning figure rather than a sticker price. It is based on what has internally been projected at the company, according to Fortune, and Fortune adds that the consumer price could come down if Microsoft decides to subsidize the cost, as many console makers have done in the past.