"No."
- Xbox chief Phil Spencer, responding to a question from Business Insider about whether the company expects to make money on sales of the upcoming Xbox One X console.
This week Microsoft publicly christened the Xbox formerly known as "Project Scorpio" the Xbox One X -- and gave it a $500 price tag.
That's a significant asking price, so it's interesting to see that Xbox chief Phil Spencer appears to have told Business Insider that Microsoft does not expect to turn a profit on sales of individual Xbox One X consoles.
"I don't want to get into all the numbers, but in aggregate you should think about the hardware part of the console business is not the money-making part of the business," said Spencer. "The money-making part is in selling games."
This lines up with what Spencer told Gamasutra months ago, when he responded to a question about the future of hardware release cycles by suggesting that when platform-holders like Microsoft release totally new (i.e. Xbox to Xbox 360) consoles too rapidly the money-making sides of the business -- games and services -- suffer.
"There's some things about how the console business runs, in terms of you don't make any money on the hardware, it's making money on the games, making money on the service," Spencer said. "That's how you kind of run a business around the console space."