"Three days ago in a sprawling interview with Entertainment Weekly, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said, "gaming is unaffordable in many cases." Today, Xbox announced price hikes for its consoles, the third in the last year.
The increases don't go into effect until August, but it does hit 512GB models with a $100 bump, while 1TB consoles are going up $150. Xbox is also discontinuing its 2TB model.
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Microsoft partly to blame
There are other companies to truly hold accountable for the memory crisis. Nvidia, OpenAI, and Google have made massive investments in what they call artificial intelligence.
But we can't absolve Microsoft (or Apple) as both companies, laggards in the headlong race toward AI, have also invested heavily in AI, with varying degrees of success.
Just this month at Microsoft Build 2026, the company spent the majority of the event discussing AI and "agentic" systems. Most of the work is business-focused, but it's clear AI is what has the company's attention right now.
Gamers don't want it
Gamers on the whole are a capricious bunch, to put things nicely, but as a recent Game Oracle study found, they don't want AI. Titles with the AI-generated assets tag on Steam received 53% fewer ratings, indicating a lack of interest, and were more likely to be negatively reviewed.
Now, it's possible that AI is allowing more lazy developers to push out more slop, a veritable abyss that will seemingly never go away, AI or not.
Still, it speaks to a wider trend of consumers rejecting AI. Marketing Brew reports that 65% of respondents to a study said they never wanted to hear about AI again.
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Between increasing prices for the companies themselves and their customers rejecting their AI-focused products, there will be a breaking point. The question is, how close are we to reaching it?"
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