Executives in Redmond expressed relief on Tuesday after confirming the console's newly inflated retail cost has finally eliminated the public's desire to purchase the unavailable hardware.
Microsoft Corp. announced a third substantial price increase for its current-generation Xbox consoles on Tuesday, marking a major internal victory against the ongoing global component shortage by ensuring the general public can no longer afford to ask for the heavily backordered hardware.
The latest adjustment, which continues a 13-month trend of aggressively escalating retail costs across consumer tech products, was reportedly met with standing ovations at the company’s Redmond headquarters. Internal memos indicate that the new price point has successfully terrified the remaining consumer base into abandoning their search for the gaming system, entirely negating the need for the company to procure scarce GPUs and logic boards.
For over a year, we've been struggling to source enough semiconductors to meet player demand, which was an absolute nightmare for our global supply chain. By simply raising the MSRP to a level that induces severe financial panic in our core demographic, we've achieved perfect market equilibrium. Zero microchips available, zero consoles requested.
Industry analysts praised the maneuver as a highly efficient workaround to the silicon manufacturing bottleneck. Rather than investing billions in new fabrication plants or waiting for international shipping lanes to clear, Microsoft has opted to mathematically engineer a reality where the Xbox is solely purchased by sovereign wealth funds and a handful of oil executives who do not have time to play video games.
At press time, Microsoft confirmed that if the semiconductor crisis continues into next quarter, the company is fully prepared to raise the console's price to $85,000, officially transitioning the Xbox from a home entertainment device into a theoretical asset class.