Rumors and reports have indicated that Microsoft’s next-gen console, Project Helix, might cost well over $1,000, especially with the ongoing global memory shortages. Many have been curious about how the company plans to sell the console to an audience that is large enough. In an interview with Fortune, XBOX CEO Asha Sharma discussed the subject, noting that the company is still exploring potential business models.
She brought up the fact that the price of Project Helix might end up being prohibitively expensive for many people, and as such, Microsoft will have to figure out a new business model to ensure that its audience continues to grow. This potential model would be outside of Project Helix’s promise of offering a premium, high-performance console, she said.
“We will continue to look at new business models,” explained Sharma. “I think it’s what is needed for console, rather than just the most premium, high-performance console in the world. I think we reached a point where it will be hard to imagine 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 to start to come into orbit later this year.”
Interestingly, Sharma’s statement is at odds with the words of former XBOX president Sarah Bond, who said back in October 2025 that the next-generation console made by the company will be “very premium” and “very high-end”. Without going into too much detail, since much of the conversation at the time revolved around the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, Bond said, “The next-gen console is going to be a very premium, very high-end curated experience.”
As for what these radically different business models might look like, Sharma didn’t elaborate. However, industry analyst and NYU Stern professor Joost van Dreunen recently spoke about how the industry might be looking forward to renting virtual machines to players who may not want to invest in an expensive gaming machine. With consoles and PC hardware getting more and more expensive, budget-conscious gamers “will soon find that no one is catering to them,” he said. “Instead, I expect Big Tech firms will try to rent them a virtual PC or console in the cloud for a monthly fee.”
XBOX chief strategist Matthew Ball had recently made similar statement about Microsoft’s approach to its next-generation console hardware. While the company has been trying to keep store shelves stocked with current-gen Xbox hardware, looking to the future, Ball said that “the crisis is not yet getting better.”
“We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping, and we are very cognizant of the ways in which we need to change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it’s flexible,” he said. “We are working hard to rethink what the console model can look like, not in an exclusionary way, but in an additive way, so that as we take a look at this crisis, which may have acute effects for 2-2.5 years.”
“We are working very hard to figure out the best way to navigate it or a way that works for everyone, that does not ask too much from players, but also does detract from the other investments that we need to make as a company. We also have tens of millions of people who we ask to spend $500 which is still an incredible sum of money. Those people that we asked to buy a console years ago; we still have an obligation to them to meet their expectations and to have them feel rewarded for which platform they chose.”