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The demand for Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X consoles is high and is going to remain so for longer. And its supply isn’t going to be able to keep up till at least June. Microsoft’s head of investor relations, Mike Spencer, told the New York Times in an interview that supply of the Xbox consoles will be constrained at least through June.
Microsoft had already warned earlier that the Xbox Series X would be in short supply till April or beyond and it is now clear that the wait for stock is going to continue longer.
This difficult supply situation means that Microsoft has sold every Xbox unit it has in the last quarter. This was also the quarter it hit $5 billion in gaming revenue for the first time ever.
Besides the Xbox Series X, it has also been very difficult to buy the PS5 and also the latest AMD and Nvidia GPUs over the recent months, according to reports. And it looks like these shortages are going to continue through most of 2021 with AMD CEO Lia Su warning on their earnings call last week that there might not be capacity until the second half of the year.
“The industry does need to increase the overall capacity levels. And so we do see some tightness through the first half of the year, but there’s added capacity in the second half,” Su said.
AMD witnessed supply constraints in the PC market, particularly the low-end market, and in gaming towards the end of 2020.
Scalpers are a part of the problem for retailers and consumers besides the general lack of supply. The real cost of a new GPU or one of the new game consoles became incredibly high towards the end of 2020 thanks to eBay resellers. And it became an issue that was difficult to tackle for the entire industry, which also means that the wait for the Xbox Series X, PS5 or a new GPU is going to continue longer for most people this year.
