Demand for Microsoft’s latest Xbox Series X console is high, but supply probably won’t keep up through June now. In an interview with The New York TimesMicrosoft’s head of investor relations, Mike Spencer, revealed that shipments of its new Xbox consoles will be limited to at least June.
Microsoft had warned that the Xbox Series X would be in short supply until at least April or after, and it is now clear that the wait for stock will be longer. The difficult supply situation means that Microsoft achieved $ 5 billion in gaming revenues for the first time for every Xbox unit that sold in the past quarter.
Buying an Xbox Series X, PS5, or even the latest AMD and Nvidia GPUs in recent months has been incredibly difficult. These shortages appear to last for most of 2021, with Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, warning that there may not be capacity until the second half of the year. “The industry needs to increase overall capacity levels,” Su said in a revenue call last week. “And so we see some shortages during the first half of the year, but there is extra capacity in the second half.” AMD saw delivery constraints in the PC market, particularly in the low end, and in gaming by the end of 2020.
Part of the problem for retailers and consumers is also scalpers. The actual cost of a new GPU or game console was incredibly high by the end of 2020, thanks to eBay resellers. It’s a problem that’s hard for the entire industry to address, and it means waiting for a PS5, Xbox Series X, or new GPU will take most of 2021 for most people.