Xbox confirms ongoing RAM crisis will impact the next Xbox

Looming over the next generation of consoles is the ongoing memory and storage crisis, driven by manufacturers diverting supply to high-paying AI companies amid a massive influx of capital into the space. Xbox won't be immune to its impacts, as executives are already discussing the real-world concerns of component prices and how they will affect the next Xbox console.

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Xbox recently confirmed that hardware component costs are exploding, with Xbox CEO Asha Sharma detailing in a recent letter that, since this February, the price of storage components was 2x what Xbox had paid the previous fall. Adding, as of June this year, those prices have doubled again. The letter added that Xbox expects prices to continue rising to 5x what the company was paying just two years ago.

In a recent interview with The Game Business, Xbox Chief Strategy Officer, Matthew Ball, has touched on how the shortage will impact the next Xbox codenamed Project Helix.

"At the time [of the interview], there was a lot of, 'Ball is being histrionic,' on Twitter. However, six months later, I was underestimating how bad it is. Every single person in the industry is frustrated by that," he began, referencing a previous interview in which he said the RAM crisis "frightened" him.

"It is bad for players. It is bad for the platforms. Our obligation to our publishers is to grow that base so that they can help grow their business at a time in which everyone is struggling for growth," Ball continued. "The crisis is the right term. The crisis is not yet getting better. The window in which we and others are going to have to work through is getting longer, and that is going to constrain the category."

"We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, 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 is flexible," Ball said

"We are working hard to rethink what that console model can look like, not in an exclusionary way, but in an additive way. [The RAM crisis] may have acute effects for two to two and a half years, beyond that it's hard to speculate, but the cascade and ripple will endure," he added