"[We] need take into consideration what's happening in the world and build the best experience for our players," says Asha Sharma

Xbox is prioritising "efficiency and affordability alongside performance" for its next-generation console in the face of rising hardware costs and innovations in AI.

"All of the industry needs to start to innovate on affordability and efficiency," Xbox boss Asha Sharma told the BBC. "That is something that we have not had to do [previously]."

"But with the crisis that's currently happening in hardware and components, it is absolutely something all of us need to be thinking about and innovating on and giving people more choice in terms of how they play their console and how they purchase their console."

While Sharma declined to comment on whether the next-generation Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will include a disc drive, she addressed Xbox's new disc-to-digital feature that lets players unlock digital versions of physical games they own.

"I know players love physical media, and I know there's a lot of benefits in digital media, and I want to make sure people have a choice," she said. "We've long pioneered backwards compatibility, and so you'll continue to see that as we go forward in the generations."

Sharma also addressed the ongoing discussion about AI, noting it is "fundamentally changing a lot of things."

As former president of CoreAI at Microsoft, she said the platform will "take into consideration what's happening in the world and build the best experience for our players."

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