The Confirmation Comes After Sony Confirms Its Production of PS4s
Microsoft has admitted in an interview with The Verge that they had stopped production of their Xbox One consoles in 2020. Officially, the timeline was that Xbox One X was quietly put out of production in July 2020, while the Xbox One S continued to be produced until the end of 2020.
This news comes after the reveal that Sony, which had planned to stop production of the PlayStation 4 in 2021, has decided instead to keep producing the console to make up for the inability to make more PlayStation 5s. This also answers the question as to why Xbox is not following a similar pattern, and ramping up in production in Xbox Ones: they’ve stopped production already.
“To focus on production of Xbox Series X / S, we stopped production for all Xbox One consoles by the end of 2020,” said Cindy Walker, senior director of Xbox console product marketing. While no one could have predicted that there would be such a problem when it came to semiconductor shortages during the global issue, and the shipping problems that would follow. But, that is the root reason for the current Xbox Series X shortages that were seen in 2021 and coming into 2022.
And yet, while both Microsoft and Sony have had to lessen their expectations for sales numbers because of shortages, they’re still selling well and selling fast. Hence why Amazon recently made it so Amazon Prime members got first picks on restocks for the Xbox Series X.
Still, for those who do want to have the latest generation console, not to worry. It just will not be the Xbox Series X.
While Microsoft had initially built more of the Xbox Series X consoles, there is simply a greater ability to make Xbox Series S at this time. “We can actually build more of the Series S [chips] in the same [chip] die space as we can the Series X,” said Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox.
So, we may be seeing an increase in the less expensive Xbox Series S during 2022. It may be less powerful than the Xbox Series X, but it is available. Sometimes, you have to work with what you have.