Where to buy the Xbox Series X is already a difficult challenge due to high demand and legions of bots buying up as many units as possible. Microsoft's supply chain is struggling to keep up.
If you were expecting immediate good news about this situation, you might want to stop reading now. Microsoft confirmed yesterday (January 26) that the supply of the Xbox Series X will be constrained at least until the end of this quarter. In other words, April 1 is the earliest that things will begin to change.
The news was confirmed during Microsoft's investor conference call, where the company's CFO confirmed that demand for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S "significantly exceeded supply" and that future sales "remain constrained by supply."
While this seems like bad news, it is great news for Microsoft. CEO Satya Nadella said that the launch was "the most successful in (the company's) history, with a record number of devices sold in the launch month."
Everyone at Xbox headquarters must be pretty happy right now.This is not the first time Microsoft has admitted that it is having difficulty keeping up with demand; in November, the company confirmed that Xbox shortages would continue through the New Year, but Microsoft promised to increase production in the following four to six months. We now have a very brief update on the situation.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the situation will magically improve come April. Considering how difficult it was to get both of Microsoft's new consoles, there will still be plenty of people (and bots) hoping to get their hands on them. We can only hope that Microsoft will flood the market with Xboxes and make them available to everyone who wants one.
In some regions, the tide is already turning. In the UK, Xbox Series S inventory has been flooding in over the past few weeks, holding up for several hours with each new lot. Retailers will eventually run out of stock, but it is much better than selling out in a few hours.
I'm not going to wait and hope for an influx of consoles in the U.S., but inventory and time are key ingredients in this recipe. If we have enough of both, we'll be at the point where the Xbox Series X restocks in the U.S. won't sell out in less than a minute.
In the meantime, if you don't want to wait months for the Xbox Series X to become more readily available, be sure to check out our buying guide on where to buy the Xbox Series X.
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