Costco have now removed everything Xbox.

I don’t see a lot of representation here of people saying that they want XBox to continue making hardware. Most of the Microsoft fans I see seem to be saying just go software. Maybe that’s because there just aren’t a lot of XBox fans here or maybe it’s because many XBox fans are PC fans first and they don’t really see a downside to not having a dedicated box outside their computer.

Yes, both parties have their sheep, this is true. But you're wrong about moderates. They are the majority. There is about 25% red sheep, 25% blue sheep, and the rest are swing voters... roughly speaking. And, like I said, those are the ones that decide things. It's why we can vote for Obama one election cycle and Trump in the next. The voting power is always in the hands of those who care less about parties and more about milk and eggs and gas prices etc.

The biggest cost is Tariffs.
The average Tariff Rate in China stands at 57.6%.

Microsoft gets the Xbox Series components manufactured in Taiwan, China, South Korea and other countries, which are ALL Tariff-free as they aren't imported into the USA.
However we also need to remember that the Microprocessor inside the Xbox Series X is faster and is larger than the Playstation 5 and thus is more expensive to manufacture.

However Microsoft get's it's consoles assembled by Foxconn in China... With plans to eventually move to Vietnam if I remember correctly... Which after assembly Microsoft then imports directly into the USA where it's slammed with a chunky Tariff.
Sony dual-assembles it's consoles in Japan and China, but Sony is a unique position where it can ship Japanese assembled consoles to the USA where it is hit with a lower Tariff rate and ship chinese consoles elsewhere which are Tariff free.

American Tariffs are a tax on imports to the USA. Only Americans pay for American Tariffs.
The biggest cost is definitely Tariffs in the USA.

Other nations aren't being hit by the same price rises.

And Sony having made the right choices with chip size, assembly locations and more, can undercut Microsoft on cost.

It's pretty ironic that Donald Trump in his ATTEMPT at being "America first" is actually damaging an American product more than a product from an overseas company... But the American people voted and asked for this, no sympathy from me here.

******

However we need to keep things in perspective that the trade war is very dynamic and things can shift at any time... Trump only has to announce a higher Tariff rate on Japan for Microsoft to gain a pricing advantage. (Unlikely, but Trump is very unpredictable and stupid.)

There is also RAM and NAND price increases coming thanks to arbitrary price rises, lack of supply (Due to cutting manufacturing earlier in the year) and the A.I. Boom which is gobbling up RAM and NAND at an unprecedented rate.

The shining light in all of this is that Sony and Microsoft manufactures the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series consoles on the TSMC 6nm process which is old and less congested than class leading processes like 4nm or 3nm nodes, which has kept those component cost increases pretty minimal.

Next gen? TSMC is raising prices on it's leading edge nodes, so chips will need to be smaller or expect to pay a higher price.

Biden didn't completely back off tariffs, and with China especially, he went even harder than Trump did. The fact that Trump was given a second term should be enough for Dems to realize the American people prefer the "America first" mindset, at least where it makes sense, and that's never going to happen if the Dems drop tariffs and go back to a firm globalization mindset. I'm not so certain the Dems won't try and split the difference between the Biden admin and the Trump admin in terms of tariffs, or I'd be surprised if they don't at least run on that. I could totally see Newsom taking that approach if he runs.

Ironic that Trump had Foxconn lined up to build a bunch of large factories in the US, and that fell apart when the Dems got back into power. Not sure whether or not those plants would've or could've done console assembly, but it would've been a step towards making that a possibility in the future.

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XB has made it very clear that they don't care much about hardware anymore and won't be subsidizing in the future. PS has shown they're still willing to keep hardware prices low. How much they've subsidized PS5, or lost on potential profits over the years isn't very clear, but for SNY, the hardware still matters enough to do what they can to get hardware into gamers hands. Right now PS5 sales are still close enough to PS4 that they have little reason to lower pricing. PS5 Pro sells far less than PS5 does, so it stands to reason its manufacturing costs are higher, so its price should also be higher. However, Pro is being marketed by SNY almost as an extra halo like type product in terms of it's pricing, so it's far higher than one might expect.

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Not directly applicable, but a mass manufacturing pricing example: CATL, one of the largest battery manufacturer's in the world, just started producing sodium ion batteries. The cost is something like 20¢-25¢ per Wh right now because production is low since it's a brand new product. They've stated based on their history of production, which includes many other different battery types, that once sodium ion production levels match that of lithium, mass orders will cost around 10¢-12¢ per Wh. The cost will be half of what it is now. Similar to how Apple would always pay far more for new TSMC nodes early on, only for that process node to end up considerably cheaper as time goes on. Mass manufacturing can impact pricing by up to half.

Tariffs are some of the most unpopular things that Trump has done so I think reversing them is probably the way to go from a "what the American people prefer" standpoint. 

Given the fact that Xbox is almost a digital only gamepass machine, what benefit does it give retailers to push it instead of PS5 and Switch 2? They will sell a lot more physical games from people buying PS5/Switch 2 over people buying an Xbox, and retailers benefit more from physical game sales over console sales. I think the all digital direction Xbox is speeding towards makes it inevitable that eventually it will be a Steam deck situation where people will have to buy Xbox directly from Microsoft own online stores over having it take up space at retailers.

That is why console producers benefit from having physical copies, because it give retailers more of a vested interest to give retail space to those consoles, while a 95 % or so digital gamepass machine is pretty much useless for retailers.

The America first mindset did not help create any new manufacturing jobs under Trumps first term as a matter of fact we lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and it's going to be even worse in his second term since we are currently in a recession and will lose even more manufacturing jobs in his second term.  Tariffs aren't helping manufacturing in the US anyway since almost nothing that is made in the US is made exclusively with US sourced goods except food products and even a good chunk of those are made with imported goods.

Correct. And the only things most middle-Americans (swing voters) care about are jobs, low gas prices and cheap things at the store. Everything else is just noise to them.