I’m going to structure this blog post the reverse of what I typically do. Usually I start with an autobiographical note, then I give background and reasoning for my solution, then I actually give solution.

Today we start with the solution, then the background, then some autobiography.

What XBox should do

A year from today (roughly — although ideally it would release next holiday season) Microsoft should release a new console that isn’t the next generation of XBox. Instead it should be an affordable celebration of XBox’s gaming history.

We’ll have a section below explaining the why behind most of this but the console should have these specs:

• Targeting the performance of the Xbox One (or One S, if practical)
  • 12 GB RAM (could do with 8, potentially)
  • 2 TFLOPS
  • AI upscaling (the one new, and important, thing)
• Slot Loading 4k Blu Ray Drive
• 512 GB SSD built in
• MicroSD for storage expansion
• HDMI, Ethernet, USB C and Power ports
• Compatible with all generations of wireless Xbox controllers
• A target price of less than $250

What should it look like? Well, a lot like this:

With a few differences:

• Slot loading drive in the center instead of off-set tray loading drive
• Much sharper lines — no gradual curves like this one
• Controller ports replaced with USB C ports
• XBOX button instead of the power button (and make the eject button the smaller one)

And What Makes it Special?

This is an Xbox designed to celebrate the history of Xbox — as such it has as many games as possible from the Xbox One era and before available in an online store — except every game is priced between $5 and $20 (and there are frequent, rotating sales).

Xbox Live is also here, but priced much different — you get six months free with the console, and you add a month for every $5 you spend in the store.

If you already have an Xbox account, any games you already bought that are compatible with this system (ooh, I just thought of the name! XBox Zero! or X0 for short. Man, I should’ve been in marketing. I like it) —

If you already have an Xbox account, any games you already bought that are compatible with X0 are automatically in your library, and any games you buy on the system go with your account to future systems.

This console will also have a highly curated “Indies” section, where recently released Indie games compatible with X0 will also be available — as long as they are available for a sub $20 price.

The X0 can also play games off the disk drive, but with a more generous licensing system. Just sticking a game disk in the drive authorizes that device to play it for 30 days — even if the disk is removed and used elsewhere.

It should be nostalgic for older users, and a cheap way to game for younger users. It should bring the fun of the SNES classic from a few years ago, without the limitations (and without feeling like a tiny toy).

But … why?

Xbox recently let go of their long time leadership and brought in new blood. It’s obvious that they feel Xbox needs some kind of reset. And hey, it just so happens everyone else feels roughly the same way.

Most of the current issues with Xbox can be traced back to one problem: Xbox leadership has a great grasp of statistics, but not psychology. This started with the Xbox One.

I don’t know if you remember the launch of the XBone, but it didn’t go great. A few highlights:

• Shipped a Kinect with every console and required it to be plugged in to even function
  • Statistically the idea that people wanted to engage with more than a controller was accurate (Wii sales numbers), psychologically they didn’t understand how turned off people were by having an always on mic and camera in their living room
  • This also raised the price, which Sony took advantage of
• Required a daily check in via the internet for licensing
  • Statistically they knew most gamers had broadband, psychologically it was still a step too far and limited gamers perceived freedom
• Wouldn’t allow game sharing due to restrictive DRM, even of physical games (though they reversed this)
  • Statistically they knew people didn’t often share games, and used sales weren’t going to be huge, and they were right in guessing that most people were going to transition to a digital library during this generation. Psychologically … they vastly underestimated the cost of removing a feature most people didn’t use

All these controversies led to the XBone stumbling out the gate, which wound up being a real problem because, well, let’s just let Phil Spencer, former CEO of Xbox, explain:

We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games. We want our Xbox community to feel awesome, but this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console that somehow we’re going to win the console race doesn’t really lay into the reality of most people. There is no world where Starfield is an 11 out of 10 and people start selling their PS5s, that’s not going to happen.

Phil’s right! It was the Xbone/PS4 generation where people DID start buying digitally (just like they predicted), but because the XBone was so unattractive people started building those libraries on PlayStation, not Xbox.

No where is this more obvious than the sales. The Xbone sold over 20 million FEWER units than its predecessor, the Xbox 360. How did PlayStation fair? The PS4 sold roughly 30 million MORE units than the PS3. Sony sold twice as many PS4’s than Microsoft sold XBones.

And with the digital libraries now firmly in Sony’s camp, the slide continued, with the latest generation of Xbox selling about 1/3 of what the latest PlayStation is doing.

Don’t worry, Microsoft had an answer

Of course, Xbox wasn’t going to take it laying down. If the problem was the digital library then Microsoft had a solution — just sell people a whole massive digital library for a monthly cost! Netflix the whole situation!

And thus was born Xbox GamePass. Hundred (thousands? I don’t know) of games for a low(ish) monthly price.

Again, Xbox accurately identifies the problem (the digital library) but their solution misses the psychology. You don’t own your netflix movies — you’ve got a sword hanging over your head in the form of that monthly payment — miss it (or decide not to pay it) and that library disappears. It doesn’t feel the same.

But Microsoft wasn’t willing to give up. Instead of looking at the fundamental problem (how a netflix library doesn’t feel like your library), they thought maybe the problem was that the games weren’t good enough. So they went on a shopping spree, spending likely more than $100 billion (some of the transactions were private) to purchase studios big and small, including Activision Blizzard for almost $80 billion all on its own!

Why? To beef up game pass! To make it something you couldn’t afford to live without!

But it didn’t work, because, again, they were tackling the wrong problem. It wasn’t the game choice that was keeping people from flocking to game pass. It was the feeling of not owning your game.

This feels kind of like the digital transition as well. Maybe in five years everyone will be signing up for “the netflix of games” — but we’re not ready for that yet. We still like to feel like a game is “ours.”

They weren’t done yet

So what do you do when you have a bunch of extremely expensive studios making games for your game pass that you can’t get people to buy, largely because people aren’t buying your hardware?

Well, the obvious solution (and the one microsoft chose) is to abandon the hardware — make gamepass something that runs on PCs. It runs on cell phones. It runs on tablets. It streams via the internet. Remember these ads?

I know this refrain sucks, but again we see Microsoft understanding the statistics, but not the psychology. They probably saw statistics about how many people play on PC, or on cell phones. They saw statistics about how many people own Smart TVs. They probably saw statistics about how streaming games only has 5 milliseconds of input lag (or whatever).

But they didn’t pay attention to the psychology:

• As a former Google Stadia user (boo ya), I can say that no matter how good the experience, streaming games will eventually suck and that one awful experience ruins it because every time you play you’re wondering if you’re going to die from some lag or lose your game when the internet drops.
• People play different TYPES of games on cell phones and smart TVs and laptops
• Oh man, they really didn’t understand how much the few people who DID buy their very expensive hardware would HATE the idea that MS is abandoning them to chase the Angry Birds market

It didn’t work. The final nail in the coffin is that they keep raising prices — game pass ultimate (the good one) is $30 a month now. That’s $360 a year! That is, well, almost as much as a whole console (before they started jacking up the prices of those too).

Which brings us to today, and the real solution

Here’s what Xbox needs to do:

• Lower the barrier to entry
  • The good xbox starts at $650 and goes up to $1000, and the crappy one is $400. WHAT?
• Allow people to build their libraries cheaply
  • XBox gamepass is too expensive, and doesn’t even count (as we’ve discussed above)
  • New games have increased to $70, plus DLC and special editions
• Send a clear message to your fans that Xbox (the physical box) still matters and can provide a unique experience

And that’s where the Xbox Zero comes in! Now let’s talk about why we chose those specs above:

• Targeting the performance of the Xbox One (or One S, if practical)
  • We target the xbox one in order to keep the cost of the box itself down, and also because that is the generation where you started losing people. This means many former fans probably still have games from that generation that they never played. You can lure back lapsed fans, and the games still look good enough, and have modern enough mechanics, that people who never had an xbox wouldn’t be turned off by the selection.
    • 12 GB RAM (could do with 8, potentially)
      • RAM is so expensive! We’re targeting a generation with less, and slower, RAM.
    • 2 TFLOPS
      • This is a little above the One S, and puts you just above the Valve Steam Deck, Switch 2 (undocked) and PS4. This is also the area that saw decreasing returns in performance — the PS4 pro had 4.2 TFLOPS, but only looked a little better than the originals 1.8 TFLOPS. Although modern consoles hit 12 or 16 GFLOPS, I think 2 is the price/performance sweet spot for this project
    • AI upscaling (the one new, and important, thing)
      • With those 2 TFLOPS you won’t be rendering native 4k, but some AI upscaling can go a long way towards improving that — and will especially help with legacy games designed to render at 480p.
• Slot Loading 4k Blu Ray Drive
  • This is optional, but it allows people to watch movie, play their old game, and signals that this is a different kind of console — playing in to the fact that it’s a legacy console, and legacy consoles had disk drives. The only downside is cost.
• 512 GB SSD built in
  • in 2013 (the year of the XBones release) the average game size was around 20 GB. Because the X0 targets legacy titles (including Xbone), we can get away with less storage.
• MicroSD for storage expansion
  • But still, some people may want more. Let them do it cheap and easy!
• HDMI Out, Ethernet, USB C and Power ports
  • Nothing fancy! No IR ports. No special expansion slots. No optical audio (HDMI is fine for audio now), and no HDMI In (shudder)
• Compatible with all generations of wireless Xbox controllers
  • Let people bring what they’ve got — or buy whatever is cheap. We’re keeping the cost down!
• A target price of less than $250
  • All of the above serves the purpose of keeping the price down, and I think $250 is doable (maybe even $200, in a perfect world). Remember, our goal is to provide dedicated hardware that feels special, but also lowers the barrier to entry. In a world where consoles are getting more and more expensive people would be happy to see something they can put under their Christmas tree that doesn’t break the bank. And for dedicated gamers this is almost an impulse buy! Could cost less than just three modern games (or one year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate).

Why the weird store where everything is cheap? Microsoft already has those games! They’re a sunk cost, so anything they can get out of them is gravy, and it let’s people BUILD THEIR LIBRARIES — at the cost of an impulse buy. Less than a trip to Chipotle. WAY less than door dashing Chipotle. Not a fake library that they could lose. Their library that they can keep forever.

It’s the same thing for game pass. Older gamers remember how magical game pass felt in the 360 era — give them that feeling for cheap. Encourage them to build their library. You know, do something nice for your consumer, for once.

And then what?

If the X0 is successful (and I think it would be), build on it with a handheld in a year or two — a handheld that targets the exact same specs and uses the same library. Can you call it the XBoy? I think you should.

Then, a year or two after that, you release the next real Xbox — you know what? Let’s just make a list.

• 2026-2027 — Xbox Zero
• 2028-2029 Xboy Handheld (Nintendo would sue, but man it would be fun)
• 2030-2031 — Next Full Power Xbox (drop the S series — people can just buy the X0 if they want cheaper)
• 2033-2034 — follow up to the X0, targeting the Xbox Series X
• 2025-2036 — Xboy 2
• … and so on. You get the picture

Do it, Microsoft! Do it, Asha Sharma!

Oh yeah, I said I’d end with an autobiographical note. Man, this has been a long one. I’m so done with this post already. Well, I said I would.

I had this idea as I noticed a few trends, some in myself and some, you know, societal.

• New generations of games have diminishing returns
  • Think of a series you like. Which one is the best one? Is it the most recent? Maybe, but you probably like older ones too. One of my guilty pleasures is the far cry series, and I really think it peaked with Far Cry 3. I mean, I like 4 too, but 5 and 6? Meh. And what about Skyrim? When the new Oblivion remaster came out did you immediately find yourself drifting back to Skyrim anyway?
• I like to build my library — way more than I have time to play it
  • Seriously, if a game is on sale for five bucks and there’s a 10% chance I’ll play it, I’ll pick it up! I actually feel bad for my wife, now that she’s into gaming I’m constantly adding to both my backlog as well as hers (as long as it’s cheap).
• When you buy an older game you can buy the “ultimate edition” or whatever
  • And that’s great! Some older games even strip out horrible monetization when the game is no longer supported or when people are just really mad about it (looking at you, Shadow of War)
• Everything is getting more expensive and it sucks
  • no explanation needed