'Radically different' business models coming to Xbox, CEO Asha Sharma says

Starting in 2026, Xbox will start to form new and innovative business models the likes of which we haven't seen before...and they could include free ad-supported streaming.

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Xbox isn't in a great place right now. Following the departure of Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond, Xbox brought in a new CEO, Asha Sharma, to effectively reboot the business. We've already seen Sharma make big changes to Xbox, including reducing Game Pass' price and reversing course on Xbox exclusive games, but more shifts are coming.

At a recent Fortune Magazine event, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said that "radically new business models" will start to become future money-making strategies for Xbox. The firm is rumored to offer a free, ad-supported version of its xCloud game streaming service later this year, and this could be what Sharma is referring to.

"I think that we will continue to look at new business models, I think is what is needed for console, rather than just the most high-performance console in the world," Sharma said.

"I think we've reached a point where it will be hard to imagine that mass audiences can afford thousands of dollars in a console generation. So I think we will start to see radically different business models that we never expected start to come into orbit later this year."

Wait...does that mean Project Helix won't be a high-performance console? In 2024, then-Xbox president Sarah Bond said that Helix would be a "very premium, very high-end curated experience."

No, Helix will still be a top-tier product, Sharma says:

"I'm excited about it, it's a console that's also going to allow you to play your PC games, have backwards compatibility, have leading-end performance. But there's material work to do to make sure that it is available to people who want to play, so we're working on that."

Microsoft is expected to roll out some sort of ad-supported gaming product later this year, and users are expected to be able to watch ads in exchange for playing limited hours of free game streaming on specific devices.