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.
