While a $1,200 starting price would be historically high for the game console market, even accounting for inflation, it also reflects a new normal: The 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. This year, the Steam Machine broke the $1,000 starting price, while the 2-year-old technology in the PlayStation 5 Pro is now going for $900, and the 6-year-old Xbox Series X now starts at $750.
It’s super-duper awesome that they were kind enough to pass all the cost down to us.
I project Microsoft can lick my taint. They bought up all the studies, cancelled all the good games, raised prices, forced AI into everything, want to abandon physical media and lock us in to their digital store and have a monopoly on pricing… And they still can’t release a console at a reasonable price. 🖕 Microsoft has abandoned gamers, let them suffer when the AI bubble pops.
What I’m looking forward to seeing is how many scalpers that will buy it on the first day.
And how no effort will be made to stop.them.
At that price (which will probably be closer to 2k CAD) I think my console gaming life will be over. It was a good run from NES to now.
Steam deck is looking more and more appealing or just build my own computer again
This whole project seems like a load of hot air to appease investors. It got the spotlight right when Asha took the reigns 7 months ago and even now we know exactly jack shit about it, despite supposedly launching next year. But it’s estimated to cost 1200-1800 based on…vibes I guess, because we don’t even know what form it will take.
“Xbox is partnering with Klarna…”
If this is the price… Maybe would be nice to have a way to install SteamOS on the console. Or better install any Linux so I can use as a working station and a gaming gig.
It’s funny that you think in 2028 Microsoft is going to let you install any OS you want on any hardware they sell.
Brother in 2028 the only hardware you will be able to buy will stream all your software from the cloud for a rental fee. They’re coming and taking away computing.
I don’t want to live in this world xD
To be honest, I’m learning how to repurpose all my hardware, even my old android tablets I’m figuring out how to make something useful from it. Even it’s just to have a local hosted Wikipedia.
AI companies ruin the RAM and video card market, so no one runs 200GB models for free.
This ruins the new-game market on PC and consoles.
AI allows people to spin copies of games
Next up,
All consoles fail
All console makers stop letting people have binaries
Gaming as a service AGAINAI companies ruin the RAM and video card market, so no one runs 200GB models for free.
No, AI companies ruin the RAM, Storage, and video market so no one can compute independently, and they all have to stream cloud services which can be monitored by AI, gatekept without the possibility of piracy (or first sale doctorine), unhackable/unmodable, and rented forever.
This is way bigger than gaming. What happens when they can predict markets? What happens when they can move markets? When journalists get silenced, when inconvenient truths are hidden?
Why wouldn’t they when we are so dependent on it?
They’ve been able to move markets for years. High frequency trading bots have caused several flash crashes.
One guy did it on his own from his house in London
No thanks, going to stick with my gaming PC I got like 4 years ago.
Yeah, my steam deck still works fine for most games. And when steam deck 2 comes along, I’ll be ordering one immediately.
With these sorts told prices being rumoured I’m not sure how viable this next generation is going to be.
Disposable incomes are dwindling, future economic prospects look…uncertain to put it positively. Parents especially sleek unlikely to spend 4 figures on a console when their kids already have phones.
My 7900 xtx must last forever.
I’m still rocking a Pascal GPU from Nvidia. Shit’s not even officially supported driver-wise anymore, but it’s only getting more dear to me, especially with all the news.
If I’m paying that much for a device, I damned well better have root access. I’m done buying machines that big corpos control.
Looks like you’ll never pay that much for a device ever again
I’ll bet they do this like a phone plan. Bundle the console with GamePass, and give folks a 3 year contract that is broken into a combined monthly payment for the cloud service and a hardware payment plan.
they did that with the previous Xbox,called it the all access pass. It was the unit combined with gamepass ult which you had for the duration of the two or three-year payment plan I understand their thought process on it because it does do a good job at forcing the consumer to have a subscription they normally wouldn’t have, but in reality, the only thing it did was make it so I didn’t purchase any actual games for the unit, so when their overpriced subscription finally ran out, I had no reason to continue using the console, and it’s basically collected dust since because all of the games I would have purchased, I had already played via Game Pass Ultimate, and I had no hard copy games to play.
To be fair, it would’ve helped if they had compelling games worth playing. There was a brief minute when X / S users were feasting, but a lot of the studios MS bought turned into dud factories.
but a lot of the studios MS bought turned into dud factories. but MS turned the studios they bought into dud factories.
–ftfy
yea that’s fair as well, I just didn’t see the point in playing a console that I didn’t have anything left to play on.
Let me check between my couch cushions…
