The cost of gaming keeps climbing month after month. From the rising price of RAM to the soon-to-spike cost of graphics cards, gaming is slowly turning into a luxury hobby. And if you haven’t heard already, a little-known console called The Nex Playground actually outsold the Xbox Series X during Black Friday. The Nex Playground is a small, cube-shaped motion-play system where you can play games similar to what the Xbox Kinect offered.
The Nex Playground went for $199 (normally $249) on Black Friday, while the Xbox Series X stayed at full price. It’s no surprise families chose a $199 console over a $649 one. I can think of plenty of reasons a kid doesn’t need a nearly $700 console, and clearly most families agreed—because the numbers show it.
Setting aside the console’s total cost for a moment, if Microsoft truly wanted to get more Xboxes into people’s homes, they would have discounted the Series X for Black Friday, or at least offered a couple of bundle deals. But you know what was on sale? Xbox Game Pass.
Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in being a traditional console manufacturer anymore. Instead, they’re pivoting toward becoming a full cloud-gaming platform. That’s why you’re seeing their games show up elsewhere—like Gears of War recently releasing on PlayStation. If they raise the price of their hardware, they’ll still make money off customers who don’t mind paying, while nudging everyone else toward Xbox’s cloud ecosystem. And with PC gaming continuing to grow, that shift makes even more sense for them.
The upcoming Steam Machine could push Microsoft’s strategy even further, assuming Valve prices it low enough. If consumers can buy a compact PC that plays their Steam library and runs Xbox cloud titles, why choose the next Xbox at all?
Since the Steam Machine is basically a small form-factor PC, it gives Microsoft an easy off-ramp from making consoles entirely. They could pivot fully to digital: a development studio and a cloud gaming platform, just like Steam, without spending billions manufacturing the next Series console.
Of course, I could be completely wrong. Only a handful of people inside Microsoft know what Xbox’s long-term strategy really is. But to me, this feels like writing on the wall for physical media collectors and traditional couch gamers.
