After experiencing a wave of price increases, the price of Microsoft’s current-generation console Xbox Series Even so, Matthew Ball, vice president of Microsoft’s Xbox division, said that the console is still “difficult to meet market demand.” Predictably, not many people believed him.
After the Xbox conference earlier this week, Matthew Ball accepted an interview with the media. According to him, player demand for Xbox consoles is still higher than their production capacity, and emphasized that they will continue to produce faster. Although there are still many restrictions behind this, he still emphasized that this is a challenge they must face.
However, this statement seems a bit unconvincing to players. First of all, the current sales performance of the Xbox Series X|S console is not ideal. Even though Microsoft has not officially shared the sales performance information of this console with players for some time, according to estimates from many market analysts and industry insiders, the total career sales of Series X|S are approximately 28 million units. Not to mention, Xbox officials have publicly admitted before that they lost to Sony’s PlayStation 5 in this generation’s console war. Considering that the next-generation “Project Helix” has entered the development stage, players believe that this console seems to be difficult to catch up with the achievements of the Xbox One.
therefore,player communitySkepticism was widespread, with some even bluntly sharing photos of Xbox consoles readily available in retail stores, saying they could buy an Xbox Series X or S console almost anywhere if they wanted one. Other responses, mostly in the form of memes, more lightly questioned the veracity of the statement.
According to the analysis of “The Gamer” website, there is actually another way to interpret Ball’s remarks. As AI data centers began to boom in the new year, the supply of memory and other components was severely affected, causing major hosts to start to rise. In this case, Ball’s “supply cannot meet demand” means that it may not be that players’ demand for Xbox consoles is too high, but that it is simply starting to face challenges on the supply side.
For a console that has been on the market for more than five years, the production scale will have been significantly reduced. If coupled with the recent increase in costs and selling prices, the Xbox team is likely to start trying to control supply in a more precise way to avoid excess inventory and the situation where the console is piled in the warehouse and cannot be sold.
On the other hand, after the new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma officially took office, the company’s internal operating policies have also begun to undergo considerable changes. One of the most significant changes is that the Xbox team will once again emphasize the “console exclusive” plan.
Although Microsoft’s own masterpieces such as “Halo: Evolved”, “Fable” and “Forza Horizon 6” will still be on PS5 as originally planned, at the Xbox Games Showcase, officials also confirmed that new games such as “Gears of War: Days of Incident” and “Clockwork Revolution” will be exclusive on Xbox consoles, trying to reverse the decline by giving players more incentives to buy Xbox consoles.
Source: KOCPC Chinese