Microsoft Expects Xbox Series X Shortages Until At Least June 2021

I think it will be later than that myself. We are already near the end of April, so June is only about 5 weeks away. I have a Series X, but still can’t get hold of a PS5 🙄

@Nightcrawler71 I fear you may be right on this. Fortunately I got a Series X and PS5 on launch day. Sucks that a lot of people haven’t been able to snag one though.

Suggestion to those who haven’t gotten one yet: find a tracker. I use one called nowinstock that has served me well over the years.

@SegataSanshiro I remember AMD execs saying that they'd shored up more manufacturing capacity at the beginning of the year, but that the contracts wouldn't come online until the "second half" of 2021. So it's possible that it could "magically" get fixed soon in that the cavalry of additional production capacity that was sourced months ago should start going online in a few months.

@Nightcrawler71 by the time supply catches up it'll be the holidays which will just throw it all out of wack again. My prediction is still Feb-Mar 2022 before you can just walk in a store and grab one any time.

@SegataSanshiro It probably depends on how much they're willing to use air freight at this point. They keep using the June date which always seemed much too early to me. But if that happens to be when the new fab units go online, then if they're going traditional ocean freight for distribution add another 2+ months (or 6 if it goes via Evergreen) to that to get product going anywhere. If they go air freight, additional supply could be in the pipeline within a week of the new fab units becoming active. Depends if they're still willing to spend like it's launch time or not, and that probably depends on the cost-benefit of how much loss on hardware to absorb weight against how much loss on potential software sales they're taking by not having hardware out there. AMD doesn't need to worry about freight for their parts, because it's mostly going from various places in Asia (largely Malaysia and Taiwan) to China from semiconductor output to product assembly, so local transport is fast enough to get it to the Foxconn factories.

MS could foot the bill and not even notice the check, but it might be more valuable for them to have the "it's such a success it's constantly sold out" headline running longer rather than actually meeting demand sooner and showing units sitting still while PS5's sell out still. Sony would have to weigh the cost of freight vs the software losses as they have some big hitters like R&C coming up soon. And Nintendo will keep supply scarce forever because Nintendo. I'm surprised they didn't name Switch's end of life date yet just to force people to stock up on spares.

@SegataSanshiro Xbone was a failure, but it managed to not be a catastrophe. I remember at one point Phil defending the WiiU from the press saying something like he wishes they had numbers like that

Nintendo...... Nintendo is doing more Nintendo things than Nintendo ever has done before. I love them and hate them at the same time, but there's a special scolding required when a company can manage to make Sony look consumer friendly.

@SegataSanshiro Kind of makes Switch slightly miserable, though, for the people that did own a WiiU. From a business sense that's a tiny part of the market. From a PR sense, screwing the repeat customers that are with you in the bad times isn't necessarily wise. The takeaway is: never buy a nintendo platform until you see if it's a success or not. If it's not, just wait for the next one and everything will be there anyway. MS made owning an X1 a lot more satisfying an experience, failure or not. Sony did the same with PS3, though their handling of the Vita makes WiiU almost look good.

X1....if it's not a failure, it's sure something other than a success. It did OK in the US, I think it's safe to assume, but I don't think a single market non-failure can quantify it as a even adequate. It's practically non-existent outside the US. It was practically non-existent in the US until the 1S arrived, and really not until Game Pass. I don't really think the final 3 or 4 years was so much about saving X1 as much as laying the groundwork for a brand reboot with XSXS. Which as a campaign appears very successful.

@SegataSanshiro Only Nintendo can kick Sony's entire 1st party sales to the curb as inconsequential with a single game that involves nothing but grinding a 1200x1200 tile map for the same exact resources every single day in a "building" game that lets you build basically nothing, with no objective other than placing objects anywhere. Take the cute mascots away and it would barely pass the mustard as a $15 indie. And they take it to such sales heights heights that Spencer had to use it to advertise the Series X.

I have always been Nintendo-first, but man, the way they do business, and the way they can curb-stomp the industry sales with games that make CDPR look like try-hards..... I will never understand, and it gets a bit tiring. The more Disney they become, the less enjoyment I'm getting from them.

In the current climate, as a gamer, Xbox feels like the last home of actual gaming other than PC. Nintendo's mostly interested in being an IP merchandising and licensing company like Disney. Sony's mostly interested in selling games to moviegoers. Dark days in both camps for people that just love video games. To be fair to Sony, Returnal looks like legit gaminess, but the shoehorning of the gritty survival movie theme irritates me, the price tag is just wrong, and the more the media tries to become their marketing engine and promote it as a legit blockbuster title irritates me and turns me off the way Undertale memes did. I'm not interested in it, to me it's the kind of game I'd try out on Game Pass for a few days to see what the hype is about and then move on, but I do commend them for actually publishing (not making) a gamey game for a change.

X1...yeah, it's a kind of odd underdog story in the US. Still crushed by PS4, but not as huge a gap as you'd think. I still don't think a single market success counts as a success in this business though. By that count Vita was a success because it did well in Japan. I loved X1X, but I can admit it was a failed generation for them. I'm fine with that though. They used it to build up to the current gen, and it set the stage for a fantastic one. I do think Series will end up doing quite a bit better than even 360. I think when Sony's done shooting themselves in the foot, they'll have opened the door to a lot more MS competition, and Bethesda exclusivity, if they do it, will definitely encourage some sales that were otherwise content to sit on PS.

@SegataSanshiro LOL, yeah, I still don't get the ACNH sales. And I'm a big AC fan. And I still don't get NH. To me ACNH is to AC as if Forza 8 came out as a top-down overhead racetrack game, but you could build your own track using drag and drop pre-made curves. Choice of 4! And then everyone celebrates it as the greatest game of all time and talks about having played for 1400 hours in just 6 months. And you're watching thinking "We used to have a racing simulator, now we have a NES level game, and somehow it's celebrated as visionary...I don't get it?" And then you get shouted down by the people that somehow managed to play at least 3 hours a day every single day for a year.

In my mind, ACNH and Smash have done to Nintendo what TLoU1 did to Sony: Converted the whole brand into a product line trying to replicate that singular success to a new audience that I'm clearly no longer part of.

But yeah, that ties into your comment on TLoGoUZT, that appeal to the larger markets seems to steer pretty wide around the market that they used to appeal to. Mine, leaving only MS aiming for the gamernerd(TM)

Haha, yeah, I'm not sure Sony is going to stop shooting their feet either. And I'm sure they have someone filming on a shakeycam over their shoulder as they shoot at their feet. I really doubt that strategy plays out long term, but we'll see. It seems like standard media exec thinking: This worked last year for them, so lets do the same thing they next year until it stops selling!

The "where GP exists" wording is still interesting. It probably means XB, PC, Android, iOS, MacOS. That's probably all it means. But it's interesting wording.

@SegataSanshiro Haha, yeah it's the exact same for me with AC. And that's just it, they removed the simulation from the simulation game and replaced it with rudimentary building and turning it mostly into a dollhouse decorator. But the true believers in NH will insist it's better, that the old games didn't have any more simulation than this does, and that there's thousands of hours of fun to have just placing objects. I was hyped for the next AC for 8 years. Finally got it and waited for the fun to start. It never happened. I really dislike what it did to an otherwise special series.

And yeah I do think that's what happened at Sony regarding ND. And since Sony corp already is baked into hollywood it was all too easy to fall into that trap. At one point after you they were actually considering merging the divisions and having Sony Pictures a subsidiary of PlayStation. Kind of says it all. They legit were planning to have their major film studio operate as a lesser subsidiary of the games company. It was voted down, but to me it's clear in spirit it succeeded. Jimbo could have had it all.... Running playstation AND one of the biggest hollywood studios. Instead he's stuck with naughty dog and the seven clones.

Jim may not be a dummy but he's a stereotypical media executive which is more or less a synonym . Jim "Moonves" Ryan... Jim "The Matrick" Ryan. He gets media, but I get the impression he knows too little about games to know what decisions might be errors. And is too cocky to accept others know more. The sheer number of times he says one thing and then the company does something else (more sane) is astounding.

Reading all this makes me realise how in current circumstances it was surreal to me to enter a shop in November and take one Series X from a shelf and just buy it.

@SegataSanshiro lol, and thus my problem with Bethesda fallout, too! (Seriously, big og fallout fan. Can't really stand bethesda's version. MS now has all the REAL Fallout guys under the tent now.... Please please force them to show bethesda how to make fallout.....). Fargo, Cain, Uquhart...... They're the guys that know what really makes it tick. Outer Worlds was a good cliff notes fallout but lacked the details.

What's wrong with venom and zombieland? Best free games ever, Sony nails it again! Best company knows how to treat gamers! /Sarc. To be fair, plus has had a few decent months while gold was pretty terrible, so I'll hand them a free win there.

As an executive of a company you don't need to know squat about the industry and product. But you DO need to know that you don't, and know who does, and have the ability to delegate decisions to them. That's where Jim falls flat. He knows nothing about the industry, thinks he does, and shares power like Sauron. It's like watching Eddie Lampert, the hedge fund manager trying to run Sears Holdings himself. That worked out well..... I'm sure the guys great at board meetings and financial calls. But he shouldn't be making product decisions when he doesnt know the product. So far he's said the generations thing and then immediately announced everything is ps4. He's basically said they're not doing more vr and then 3 months later the company has prototypes of new vr. He's said nobody wants old games, killed the stores, then had to backtrack and pen the blog apology personally..... Someone with a brass pair needs to rip the man forcibly away from product decisions for his own good.

Meanwhile, Phil is busy playing Destiny 2 while in board meetings with his CEO and forgot to make sure his cfo wasnt end running around him on subscription prices.

I'm so with you on Jim Ryan. 100%. Every time I start feeling good about ps5, he opens his mouth and I start to dislike the thing again. Yamauchi was a donkey... But he was an invisible, quiet donkey that let lincoln do the talking. Unfortunately Lincoln was a bigger donkey so it didn't help. But it's the thought that counts. And yamauchi knew he didn't know the product and sought a replacement that did to fix his weakness. I really don't think Jim knows he doesn't know. I think in his mind he knows film and games are pretty much the same thing. The kind of guy that refers to all employees as "the talent".

@SegataSanshiro My Fallout history is basically that I loved all the Black Isle games. Even Fallout Tactics. I was hyped for Fallout 3, bought it (still was PC-only at the time), with t he collectors edition, bobblehead, strategy guide hardback, the whole thing. Played it....was horrified by the serious apocalypse-survival presentation. This is NOT Fallout, it's a generic apocalypse game! The BI games were tongue in cheek the whole time, and were, most importantly NOT about surviving an apocalypse. They were about rebuilding after it. But more importantly, they were about humans generally sucking, politics, selfishness, greed, corruption, assumptions, herds and tribes, and general craziness. A social commentary on civilization using the end of the old civilization as a narrative tool to set up "modern people" building a new society from scratch. It was beautiful.

Bethesda took it and made it actual survival in a doomed empty landscape. Fallout wasn't about wastelands and ruins. It was about cities and towns and twisted interpretations of what came before. It was a game you played with a wry smile the whole time. Black comedy through and through. Now it was about a depressing wasteland and a photorealistic ruined DC. Granted, that last bit sounds super duper appealing..... but it wasn't Fallout. The only thing that saved that game was Billy Dee Williams.

FO4. To me it's like a Sony game. I started it and played some of it. It was ok. It seemed less dead than FO3, really. The dialogue was all but gone, though (How is that fallout? Or even a Bethesda game for that matter?) It seems good. it went in the backlog. I'll play it someday. Along with GoW the other Sony Pictures games. Someday. I'll get to them. Prolly.

76...OMG. I bought that day 1. Somehow, I don't know why, I bought the hype. Coop fallout sounded great, right? Less wastelandy. Could be cool. But no. They turned the apocalypse survival into zombie survival horror. With basically no quests, no sense of what's actually going on, and freaking MMO group crafting tables?! No. Just no. I'm a fan of Elder Scrolls Online......FO 76 that Todd assured us wasn't an MMO feels more like an MMO than their actual MMO. I haven't tried it again since launch week. I'm sure they've made it better but they can't have fixed the underlying core brokenness of the fact it's a group game without a core RPG campaign. TBH the only thing that could get me to play another Fallout from Bethesda is the fact that it will be "free" on GP, and any word that Tim, Feargus, or Brian were actually involved or at least consulted. New Vegas proved that if you give Tim & Feargus a Fallout game they can make it good. Even if it's Bethesda's format. This is the first time since the bankers exiled Brian from Interplay that the actual Fallout team (short of Chris Taylor) is actually back under one roof (metaphorically) - there's no reason other than pride not to let the real masters of Fallout have a role. And Brian spent a decade trying to get his mitts on the IP again....everyone's a fool if they don't invite him to it (he's the original creator of the IP, though Tim Cain is responsible for the wit and dialogue that makes it special, which you can see in Outer Worlds as well.)

My take on Jim, and especially the VR thing is that beyond not knowing anything about gaming, despite being god emperor, he really has no idea what's going on in the company if it's outside his line of sight and assumes his view is everyone's view. The VR comment was a laughable Reggieism. "We definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that." The most long winded possible way to say "we're not doing a new VR unit right now." And then 3 months later they're unveiling prototype controllers and confirming single wire VR. That didn't happen in 3 months. Did Jim simply not know the hardware part of the company was already half way through the design on a new VR kit? Or did he know but decided to talk in circles because that's really the thing he's best at? Who can say. There would have been simpler ways of saying "we have nothing to announce at this time with regard to VR." If he's going to copy Nintendo's business model he should learn their PR speak as well.

To be fair, Phil had "I feel really good about Halo" right before it changed to "wow this thing is a POS and will be delayed indefinitely." But that's more a case of "I trust 343 and they said it's going well, so I'm sure it's great" rather than "I believe someday there will be another Halo game. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. Will it happen someday? I believe that" (3 months later, Halo Infinite 2021!)

Jim steps his foot into it too often in ways that reveals his contempt for his own customers. "Nobody wants to play old games, we have the data that shows it!" I'm sure they do have the data that shows that only 10% of their 120M customers that mostly buy FIFA annually play old games. But he understands his market so little he misses that that 10% consists of most of the whales that buy a LOT of games, and MS is vacuuming up all the high margin customers from under him. And he misses that only 17% of his total software sales are SIE games. By his own logic, "nobody wants to play Sony games, we have the data." There are people at PlayStation that "get it". But he never lets them out of their cells and only feeds them every other day. He's got places to go, people to see, Netflix deals to sign.

About the Gold Price hike, I think that hints at the lurking forces of evil in finance and should remind us that Phil is the only barrier between us and the Jim Ryan clones that want to control Xbox within the company. I don't think Phil signed off on that one. Rumor hints of a split board room. Shortly before that we had the MS CFO making the interview rounds undermining everything Phil says in every comment. $70 games, need for more monetization, non-exclusivity of Bethesda ("it'll play best on Xbox"), etc. My assumption is that the financial higher ups ran roughshod over Phil and ran their own playbook on Gold. It backfired and Phil probably got a big "I told you so" out of it. But it should remind us that the Matrick wing of the building still has strong supporters, kind of like how the Communist party is technically still Russia's most well funded party despite having no one in power, and to always be on our guard if Phil's not around. The day he leaves or retires is the day Xbox sucks as bad as or worse than Sony (again)

(one more if it'll let me - I typed all this and then realized how long it was - oh well!)

Haha, well Yamauchi wasn't actually talking about PlayStation gamers specifically. He was specifically talking about RPG players. And he said it right after Square went to PlayStation and he sent them packing with the whole "never come back" speech. He was mostly just pouting and throwing a tantrum at Square. Ironically, he didn't really know anything about gaming (having admitted once he didn't actually understand the appeal of video games at all), and he was probably just repeating something that Miyamoto said around the water cooler once about RPGs (as Miyamoto has often expressed dislike for RPGs, and dismay that Japanese gamers play(ed) them more than action games, despite having made one - Zelda 2.)

Rare definitely was screwed over by Nintendo. That's how Yamauchi rolled. There's nobody he didn't screw over, ever. We owe him a lot in gaming, but the guy was certainly a tyrant and a shark. And I'll never be convinced he wasn't yakuza. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and inherited a playing card company in a gambling town run by ducks, the probability it's a sparrow is very slim.

My head canon about every meeting between Jim and a random employee is thus:
Jim: Great work, Bob, the numbers on this are phenomenal.
Rando: Uhm, thanks, sir, but I'm Kevin.
Jim: Whatever, Kenny, keep up the good work! That game with the guns and whatnot is really boosting this quarter!
Rando: Uhh, actually, our game has swords....we made Ghost of...
Jim: Ahh, right Ghost of War, great stuff, Dan! Keep it up! It's a record month!

I need a series x now.