If you’re a gamer who owns a 4K television, Microsoft wants you to use it to its full capacity.
The company released the Xbox One X gaming device on Tuesday to complement new technologies that pair with video consoles, according to Mike Nichols, the company's corporate vice president and CMO of gaming, who joined Cheddar for an interview.
Unsurprisingly, the greatest challenge to pull this together was packaging all of the capabilities of the Xbox One X into a smaller console, but gaming is one of the top priorities over at Microsoft, so developers took on the task, Nichols said.
“The hardest challenge was ‘how do you get it in a small package’”, he said, emphasizing that the Xbox One X is “far more powerful than any other console.”
Hardcore gamers are looking forward to purchasing the device, which retails for $499. A Twitter poll by Cheddar’s senior anchor Kristen Scholer, which generated over 2,000 responses, showed that 41 percent of respondents plan to purchase an Xbox One X.
But what exactly does the gaming sector mean for the overall success of the tech giant?
“Microsoft has been in the gaming category for decades,” Nichols said, adding the category is a very important business for the company. The Xbox One X is only an extension of what Microsoft has already been doing in the industry.
According to the market research and statistics firm Statista, the video game market in the United States is big business. In 2015, the market was valued at nearly $17 billion, and it’s expected to generate revenues of $20.3 billion by 2020.
The company reports that the majority of revenues in the U.S. gaming market last year came from digital PC and console games, with the second highest share belonging to mobile games.
Nichols told Cheddar that Microsoft has seen record demands and pre-orders for the Xbox One X, with some avid fans lining up for store openings at midnight.
Amid a backdrop of ongoing tariff uncertainty, more and more gamers are facing price hikes. Microsoft raised recommended retailer pricing for its Xbox consoles and controllers around the world this week. Its Xbox Series S, for example, now starts at $379.99 in the U.S. — up $80 from the $299.99 price tag that debuted in 2020. And its more powerful Xbox Series X will be $599.99 going forward, a $100 jump from its previous $499.99 listing. The tech giant didn’t mention tariffs specifically, but cited wider “market conditions and the rising cost of development.” Beyond the U.S., Microsoft also laid out Xbox price adjustments for Europe, the U.K. and Australia. The company said all other countries would also receive updates locally.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. in the current fiscal quarter will be sourced from India, while iPads and other devices will come from Vietnam as the company works to avoid the impact of President Trump’s tariffs on its business. Apple’s earnings for the first three months of the year topped Wall Street’s expectations thanks to high demand for its iPhones, and the company said tariffs had a limited effect on the fiscal second quarter’s results. Cook added that for the current quarter, assuming things don’t change, Apple expects to see $900 million added to its costs as a result of the tariffs.
Visa is hoping to hand your credit card to an artificial intelligence “agent” that can find and buy clothes, groceries, airplane tickets and other items on your behalf.
Shares of Deliveroo, the food delivery service based in London, are hitting three-year highs on Monday after it received a $3.6 billion proposed takeover offer from DoorDash.
X, the social media platform owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk, is challenging the constitutionality of a Minnesota ban on using deepfakes to influence elections and harm candidates.
The State Bar of California has disclosed that some multiple-choice questions in a problem-plagued bar exam were developed with the aid of artificial intelligence.
