New Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball shared a lot of interesting tidbits about the platform and publisher's new plans in a live chat with The Game Business at Summer Game Fest 2026. As covered in our previous report, Ball admitted that the 50% price hike for Game Pass Ultimate enacted a few months ago caused a major subscriber decline, and that the return to exclusives is part of the strategy to rebuild the core console business.
As reported by Gamespot, Ball also addressed the thorny issue of the component crisis, which has caused RAM and storage prices to skyrocket, admitting it is forcing Microsoft's Xbox division to rethink its overall approach to the console model, in general, and the next Project Helix hardware specifically.
The crisis is not yet getting better. The window in which we and others are gonna 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, which is a console we are committed to shipping. We are very cognizant of the ways in which we need the change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it’s flexible. We are working hard to rethinking what that 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.
Interestingly, during the conversation with Chris Dring, Ball revealed that Xbox demand still surpasses the company's supply capability.
We are producing them as quickly as possible. There is a severe limitation to how quickly we can do that, but it’s not a question of appetite. That is a privilege as a company. It is a challenge for us to figure out.
This is quite surprising, as Xbox consoles aren't exactly flying off the shelves; hardware sales have been consistently declining for years now.
Anyway, one last juicy tidbit from the interview is that Asha Sharma, who got Ball on board, asked him right away whether the situation was "fixable". The Chief Strategy Officer claimed to be a "strategic optimist", believing that there is no situation that cannot be improved.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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