Xbox is the rival of PlayStation without a doubt, they have been fighting for four generations of consoles with each other and unlike what happens with Nintendo consoles, both products are very similar in terms of features. However, the console of the company founded by Bill Gates is associated with the medal of eternal second in the face of the enormous popularity of its rival. Are we going to see a new version of your next-gen console this year to boost sales?
The Xbox Series X is an excellent console in all aspects, however, it did not quite get the lead due to the enormous mental quota that the SONY PlayStation name has. The ambition of Microsoft is not little and you just have to see its aggressive Game Pass and the purchases of large weight publishers such as Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard. However, it is more than likely that this year they will take advantage of all the momentum that comes their way to launch a new model of their new generation system.
Xbox is not doing badly, but Microsoft wants it to sell more
For several years Microsoft’s policy is not to talk about how many consoles they have sold, which contrasts with their rivals. The reason for this is clear, they do not have numbers with which to boast in this regard. In any case, it is a common modus operandi when you are in a highly competitive market. Nobody wants to be the one left behind and even less to advertise that they are the loser in a long-distance race. And this has nothing to do with subjective perception, which we each have with the console.
The only way to know the sales of a system if they were unknown was by looking at game sales, usually when a cross-platform game is released in stores, the percentage sales usually coincides with the market share of those platforms. However, you can’t do this with Game Pass, since no one with half a brain is going to pay full price to play something that can be played on Game Pass. In addition, we do not have one system in the case of the Xbox Series, but two different ones, so it is not impossible to know what the sales are.
So how do we know that they are lower? Due to the fact that if they were higher than the competition, then we would have Xbox advertising itself as the market leader. However, the differential between PlayStation and Xbox is less than that of the previous generation and is declining to the relief of those from Redmond
Is there a new Xbox Series on the way?
A few months ago, SONY launched its PS5 model 1200, which has the particularity that its main chip, Oberon, is manufactured today under the TSMC 6nm node instead of the 7nm node from the same foundry. The advantage of the N6 process is that it can inherit designs from the N7, has nearly the same cost per wafer, and allows more chips to be produced for the same cost. Which is ideal to break the problems of inventory and availability.
However, neither of the two Microsoft consoles has received a version of its main chip at 6 nm. We must assume that in order to reduce costs, what is done in these cases is to order a huge number of chips to mass-produce the consoles. Then, depending on the sales that the system has, what will be done will be to plan a new consignment. In other words, SONY has exhausted its 6nm chips earlier than Microsoft, if we add to this that it is normal that the third year after a console comes out there is usually a slim revision of them, whatever the brand, well we have one of the elements.
Another cause comes from Phil Spencer himself, Microsoft loses between 100 and 200 dollars per console sold, which limits them when it comes to manufacturing systems so as not to accumulate losses. The fact is that in the year in which they are going to approve the purchase of Activision-Blizzard and Starfield, the masterpiece of Bethesda, comes out exclusively for the Xbox Series, it is normal that they have planned a revision of their console to launch this year or even a third setup.
A potential Xbox Series XS?
Microsoft’s philosophy when choosing the graphics processor for its console was different from SONY’s, since they preferred a wider GPU and, therefore, with more cores, but at a lower clock speed. Instead, SONY with PS5 opted for a different solution. For us and seeing the size of the two consoles and the complex cooling system of the white console, it is more than clear that Redmond did a much better job in this regard.
However, AMD has improved all this time and for more than a year now, it can create a chip with a higher clock speed, but it would not serve to create an improved version of the console, but a version with fewer GPU cores. , but with the same performance. Another change would be in the memory bus, from 320 bits using GDDR6 at 14 Gbps to the same type of memory, but on a 256 bus and 18 Gbps memory. The bandwidth would be the same and the amount of total memory would also be 16 GB, however, this change saves 2 memory chips and cuts the costs of the main chip.
Although the most important thing would be the increase in flash memory for this model, since its standard storage would have greater capacity for the same price as the current model. Taking into account the state of the economy, we do not believe that they will lower the price. In any case, the key question is to know if the new model will keep the disc player or will they make the definitive leap to digital as is the case with the current Xbox Series S. In any case, Microsoft needs a console with lower costs.
The importance of times
Every product has a more or less common lifeline, it must not be denied that Microsoft’s plan is that the growth stage in terms of demand for its Xbox Series consoles will come with the events that in theory should take place this year. While it is true that both versions of Xbox are cannibalizing each other, the fact of having a console below 300 euros has also been a success.
The company can do little to make the Series S cheaper, however, the launch of a renewed Series X is not a bad strategy in the face of a renewal of the perception of the brand. What’s more, it is something that is totally to be expected and even more so taking into account that due to the losses generated by the current model, it needs a reform in order to reduce costs, on the one hand, and allow the growth in demand that they will have to meet.
