It has now been almost three months since the Xbox Series X launched, yet many gamers remain unable to buy the next-gen console amid unprecedented stock shortages.
Forced to continue playing games on their Xbox One or PlayStation 4 console, there is a growing frustration among some players online, especially with the release of next-gen exclusive games such as The Medium.
Unfortunately, it looks like these stock problems are not going away anytime soon. Here's the lowdown...
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Why is the Xbox Series X out of stock?
The Xbox Series X is not alone in the realm of stock shortages.
NVIDIA and AMD's latest GPUs join the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in being unable to meet the demand for the latest tech products on the market.
The PS5 and Series X both use custom chips created by AMD, burdening the company with a huge number of orders, alongside its own production issues for the AMD Ryzen 5000. The problem is not so much that AMD cannot create enough chips, but that the packaging and casing for these chips are in short supply, as reported by Tom's Hardware.
This all comes amid the COVID-19 pandemic that, while many companies have not specifically stated has impacted production or their profits, saw a 10% drop in ocean freight in January 2020, and a 19% drop in air freights in March 2020, according to the IFC. Logistical and distributional issues remain a problem across multiple industries, including the technology sector.
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When will the Xbox Series X be in stock?
The general consensus seems to be that we can expect these stock shortages to last until the latter half of 2021.
Following the disclosure of AMD's Q4 results last week, AMD's CEO Lisa Su said she expected these shortages to remain in place until the middle of 2021, specifically in the low-end PC and console market.
Mike Spencer, Microsoft's head of investor relations, offered a more concrete time period in an interview withThe New York Times. Spencer said that stock shortages would last until June at the earliest, adding that Xbox had sold every Xbox Series X unit in the previous quarter.
Of course, these dates are just predictions and could easily turn out to be false. There have been quite a few suggestions that certain crises could be over in a few months, but that hasn't really happened, has it?
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