Bad news for anyone still trying to buy an Xbox Series X: Demand for the console is expected to outstrip the supplies until spring 2021.
Xbox’s chief financial officer Tim Stuart made the forecast during an investor’s event last week. “I think we'll continue to see supply shortages as we head into the post-holiday quarter, so Microsoft's (financial) Q3, calendar Q1,” he said.
According to Stuart, the supplies will only begin meeting the demand by the second quarter, which starts in April. “We'll have supply cranking over the next, what, four, five, six months. And that's when I expect to see really that demand profile start to be met,” he added. (A transcript of his remarks can be found at Seeking Alpha.)
Currently, both the Xbox Series X and Series S are out of stock at all the major retailers. To buy them immediately, you’ll have to go to eBay, where third-party merchants are hawking the hardware for at least twice the normal pricing. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for retailers to receive more stock. Both Best Buy and Walmart plan on selling some Xbox Series X units, in addition to the PlayStation 5, during their Black Friday sales events.
During the investor’s event, Stuart also addressed Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Bethesda, and how the developer's games won't be made exclusive to the Xbox.
“What we'll do in the long run is, we don't have intentions of just pulling all of Bethesda content out of Sony or Nintendo or otherwise,” he said. “But what we want is we want that content, in the long run, to be either first, or better, or best, or pick your differentiated experience, on our platforms. We will want Bethesda content to show up the best as on our platforms.”
He went on to add Microsoft’s overarching goal is to use Bethesda's games to drive more users to Xbox Game Pass, the company’s Netflix-like service for gaming, which starts at $9.99. “If you think about something like Game Pass, if it shows up best in Game Pass, that's what we want to see, and we want to drive our Game Pass subscriber base through that Bethesda pipeline,” he added.