Why does the Xbox One X exist? The recently-unveiled console is certainly powerful, but Xbox boss Phil Spencer has admitted the Xbox One X is a niche product most players won’t see much value in, and that Microsoft loses money on every until sold. At this point it really seems like the Xbox One X exists purely to one-up the PlayStation 4 Pro, but Spencer insists that’s not the case.
In a recent interview with Giant Bomb, Spencer explained that the Xbox One X actually a reaction to what fans are asking for, not anything Sony is doing.
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“We’re always taking feedback. I am pretty active in the social communities around gaming, my Twitter account, Xbox Live…I’m there, I’m not trying to hide behind things. And I get that feedback, and I take that feedback and do something with it, I guess that’s reactive, but I guess it’s reactive to what people are asking for.
I will say that with the Xbox One X, I do remember from the original Xbox that there was the feeling around the brand that ‘This is a powerful console.’ And when we do our brand research even today, power is a word that pops up pretty frequently. And I wanted to make sure we were living up to the brand promise of what people were expecting from us.”
In fact, Spencer claims he hadno idea the PS4 Pro existed when developing the Xbox One X…
“And when we were designing the Xbox One X, I didn’t know what the competition was doing. I didn’t know that there would be a console shipping until later, I didn’t know there would be one until it launched in 2016. So, there wasn’t a direct competitive thing.”
Certainly, power means something – Sony‘s boasts that the PS4 was more powerful than the Xbox One was part of what won them this console generation. That said, is the $500 Xbox One X what fans were asking for? I don’t know. If Spencer thinks they were, he may not be listening closely enough.
You can check out WWG’s latest Xbox One coverage right here.
