XBOX Has No Desire to Move Away From Consoles, Exec Says

XBOX Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball comments on the current state of the console market.

It’s 2026, and video game consoles are in a tumultuous state. Conversations have begun about the next generation of hardware, even though many players feel the full potential of the XBOX Series X and PlayStation 5 has not yet been realized. There’s also the concerning issue of rising memory prices, which have put the future cost of gaming in unknown territory. Despite this, Matthew Ball doesn’t believe the console market is dead.

XBOX CSO Matthew Ball: Console Business Isn’t Dying or Declining

During a recent interview with Christopher Dring of The Game Business, Ball noted that, in today’s day and age, most of the revenue and player base in gaming are in the mobile space. Still, there are millions of dollars to be gained in the console market, even with all the changes.

“We have no desire to move away from the console business. And dying? No. It’s not declining. It is growing. It’s going to have a great year this year. What is important is that we restore that business for us. Do we need to get better at PC? Yes. Do we need to get better at mobile? Yes. But we can’t ask publishers and players to bet on us on other platforms where we are behind, where our technology is inadequate, before we shore up the platform we have, the platform that many believe we’ve mistreated.”

As for whether the generation that grew up on Minecraft and Roblox will adopt consoles as widely as previous generations of gamers did, Ball says only time will tell, but there are still young people graduating to console gaming.

“There are lots of young people adopting consoles. Do we see the same rate of young people adopting consoles that they did historically? I haven’t seen in mature markets evidence that has dramatically changed.”

Xbox recently revealed plans to restructure in July, which will involve mass layoffs. Learn more about that here. Insider Gaming will continue to monitor the story and report any updates as more information becomes available.

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