A few days ago, Xbox’s big chief Asha Sharma and content officer Matt Booty issued an open letter addressing Xbox’s ongoing struggles as a brand. Amidst the letter was an admission that Xbox is currently expected to end the year with a “3% accountability margin”, which is the brand’s internal profitability metric. “Going forward, this cannot continue,” said the letter.

Now, we have a new report from Jez Corden of Windows Central who claims to have the details. Well, some of the details, anyway.

What really caught my attention is that Xbox is seemingly losing a lot of money on every console right now, because they “struggled to secure anywhere near enough memory with fixed prices necessary to keep its hardware margins healthy.”

According to what Corden has been told, Xbox is losing “not dozens, but more in the hundreds of dollars” for every Xbox Series S/X that’s sold. Admittedly, not a lot actually are being sold right now, but it’s still enough.

Keep in mind, this is after several price increases. It’s not just Xbox, of course, as memory prices are affecting everything, but it seems like the green brand struggled to secure better deals and supply chains to help mitigate some of the damage.

Elsewhere, Jez says Xbox has benefited from some impressive game sales, but those profits have been eaten up by failures in other areas.

 “I’m told Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, and of course, Forza Horizon have all been major success stories for Xbox Games Studios, as well as things like Sea of Thieves, Oblivion Remastered, and Grounded.”

On the other hand: “Games like Avowed, Keeper, Kiln, South of Midnight, Hellblade 2, Forza Motorsport (not Horizon), and The Outer Worlds 2 didn’t come within range of expectations set by Microsoft’s spreadsheets, I’m told — either in terms of raw sales on external platforms or via Xbox Game Pass engagement and retention data.”

Corden goes on to discuss the various cancelled projects that have cost the company money

Game Pass was apparently “the pot of money Xbox has been using to subsidize other parts of the business”, but then the call was made to raise prices on that, which Matthew Ball, Chief Strategy Officer, recently said cost them millions of subscribers.

“It was then that Microsoft was also using Activision-Blizzard profits to subsidize Xbox, but when Call of Duty had an off year … once again, it compounded the problems for that subsidy,” said Jez.

All of this is why Asha Sharma has been talking about a “reset” for Xbox and having to make “tough decisions.” Journalist Jason Schreier says the company is planning major layoffs in July, and The Verge reckons that could include a studio closure.

In a bid to turn everything around, exclusives are back on the menu with both Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution announced as Xbox console exclusives. Future titles are messier, though, so while we are being promised there will be more exclusives, there are also going to be multiplatform releases, too.