Matthew Ball, Xbox’s chief strategy officer, said the ongoing memory crisis is not getting any better, in the light of Project Helix, the company’s upcoming console.
In an interview at The Game Business Live this past weekend, via GameSpot, Ball spoke about the plans for the console amidst the memory chip supply crisis—driven by rampant investment in artificial intelligence data centers (thanks, Reuters).
“The window in which we and others are gonna have to work through is getting longer, and that is going to constrain the category,” he said.
Ball said that he previously underestimated how bad things might get. In late April, the newly-appointed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said key component shortages could impact the price and availability of next-generation hardware.
At the time, Sharma said the company would be taking the potential impact into consideration, and that the company was not ready to share a launch timeline for the moment, mentioning that “the world’s pretty dynamic.”
Now, based on the conversation with Ball, demand for Xbox consoles is outstripping supply. The chief strategy officer said Xbox is producing them “as quickly as possible,” while adding that “there is a severe limitation to how quickly we can do that.”
Speaking about Helix specifically, Ball said, “We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping.”
For the time being, Xbox is rethinking what the console model can look like, and trying to remain flexible. Ball also mentioned the crisis may have acute effects for two or two and a half years.
“We are working very hard to figure out the best way to navigate it or a way that works for everyone, that does not ask too much from players, but also doesn’t detract from the other investments that we need to make as a company,” he added. “We also have tens of millions of people who we ask to spend $500 which is still an incredible sum of money. Those people that we asked to buy a console years ago, we still have an obligation to them to meet their expectations and to have them feel rewarded for which platform they chose.”
Xbox is far from the only company facing issues regarding memory shortage. PlayStation’s hardware sales went down amidst the ongoing crisis, alongside price hikes. Then, Nex Playground, Nintendo, and Valve all increased hardware pricing, noting the memory shortage as either the main or one of the prevalent factors.