Coming on the back of a new report claiming the PS5 is in serious trouble, Microsoft has confirmed another feature that will be missing in the Xbox Series X. More specifically, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has confirmed the console won't have a basic optical audio port, which is sure to burn owners of specific TVs and gaming headsets. According to Spencer, the decision to leave out the feature comes down to a variety of factors, including costs.

Speaking to IGN, Spencer says that when designing a console, marginal costs are everything. In other words, including some features may only cost a couple of bucks, but if you sell 100 million consoles, all of sudden that couple of bucks transforms into $200 million dollars lost.

“I’m going to use kind of weird terms, but the marginal cost of everything is important,” Spencer said to IGN. “So if you look at a part on a console that’s maybe one, or two dollars and you say, ‘okay, how big of a deal is that inside of a console?’ That’s a few hundred dollars. But then you say, ‘okay, we’re going to plan to sell, you know, 100 million of these consoles.’ So you take two bucks over 100 million now you’re $200 million over the life of the program.”

Spencer also suggested not many people make use of the feature on the current Xbox One and Xbox One X. On top of this, there are spatial considerations to take into account.

“We also, frankly, know how many people use it today on the console," said Spencer. "So I know you do, but we see it. So we also kind of do the math of we have to put a part in every console that X percent of people use, is there a better place for us to spend that money if we can support it in different ways.”

That said, Spencer confirmed that its various audio partners are well aware the console will be missing this feature, which hopefully means it shouldn't be too big of a problem for those that buy new headphones going forward.

“We had a conversation with the headset manufacturers prior to all of this," said Spencer. "So when we stood up and said your accessories are going to work, we weren’t kind of walking a tightrope there. We’d already had the conversations.”

Spencer concludes that he's aware this news will leave some crestfallen, however, he also points out that not matter what decisions the team at Xbox makes, there will always be disappointment at some level.

The Xbox Series X is set to release sometime this holiday season.



Posted: Apr 05, 2020 6:32 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2020/04/02/xbox-series-x-feature-audio-missing/