For several reasons, game manufacturers have to make decisions about their consoles. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the timing of some of these decisions has been expedited.
Sony recently had to choose for negative reasons. Thanks to massive supply chain issues, the company can not produce Playstation 5’s quick enough to meet demand. So in response, the gaming giant has decided to make more Playstation 4.
Microsoft has now decided for much happier reasons. Thanks to the brisk sales of the X and S units of their Xbox consoles, the company will now stop producing their Xbox Ones.
The Xbox One was released initially released in November of 2013. The system, which allowed players to play with physical discs and downloaded games, was a sales hit. By November of 2021, Microsoft had sold more than 51 million units.
In 2020, though, Microsoft conducted a dual release of two next-generation consoles, the X and S series. The company released the systems at two different price points in a forward-thinking move.
The S series retails for $200 less than the X series and features less processing power. Microsoft also made the console small and fit inside a backpack for easy transport.
The X series is more expensive, but gamers get a better picture and speed. The system CPU is four times as powerful as the Xbox One.
Sales on both systems have been fantastic. Microsoft head Phil Spencer recently told the New York Times, “At this point, we’ve sold more of this generation of Xboxes, which is Xbox Series X and S, than we had any previous version of Xboxes.”
And while supply chain issues have dogged many other gaming companies, Microsoft says they are not one of them. Spencer continued, “Supply is actually as big as it’s ever been. It’s that demand is exceeding the Supply for all of us
