The next-gen Xbox won’t cost you $1,800. It can’t. Can it?

Fortune dropped a bombshell report on the future of gaming this week. According to the publication’s Microsoft insiders, the next Xbox is projected to cost between $1,200 and $1,800 when it arrives in 2028. My first reaction: The next Xbox is dead on arrival. It’s DOA. My second thought: Microsoft knows people won’t pay that much. It couldn’t possibly charge that much money if it wants next gen to be a success. “I wouldn’t release it at all,” former Microsoft exec Mike Ybarra recently said. My third thought: Didn’t Microsoft already say out loud that it knows people won’t pay that much? Didn’t old Xbox boss Phil Spencer say “We’re not going to grow the market with $1,000 consoles”? Didn’t new Xbox boss Asha Sharma say “We’ve reached a point where it will be hard to imagine that mass audiences can afford thousands of dollars to spend” on a box? Didn’t Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball say the entire company would change its practices to make sure it’s affordable? Didn’t Sharma say Xbox would need to adopt “radically different business models” to keep Xbox from being too pricey? Did Fortune get it wrong? I don’t think Fortune’s insiders are…