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Microsoft has said that it is working as fast as it can in order to get more Xbox Series X|S stock to the hands to consumers.
During an appearance on a new podcast hosted by Xbox Live director of programming Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb, Xbox head Phil Spencer said that the company is “working as hard as we can” to produce more stock of their next-gen consoles. He also revealed that he has personally reached out to chipmaker AMD for more help with manufacturing.
“I get some people [asking], ‘Why didn’t you build more? Why didn’t you start earlier? Why didn’t you ship them earlier?’ All of those things,” Spencer said. “It’s really just down to physics and engineering.”
“We’re not holding them back: we’re building them as fast as we can. We have all the assembly lines going. I was on the phone last week with Lisa Su at AMD [asking], ‘How do we get more?’ So it’s something that we’re constantly working on,” he added.
AMD is the manufacturer of the GPU and CPU for both the Xbox Series X and S. The chipmaker also produces GPUs and CPUs for Sony’s PS5, which, as Spencer pointed out, has also been faced with similar stock shortages since launch.
“But it’s not just us: gaming has really come into its own in 2020. Obviously, PlayStation 5 is in very tight supply,” he said. “When you look at the graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia… there’s just a lot of interest in gaming right now and console sales are just a sign of that, game sales are a sign of that and hardware is in short supply.”
The Xbox Series X|S shortage is expected to last until at least April 2021, according to Xbox CFO Tim Stuart. Last November, the exec said that the company expects “to see supply shortages as we head into the post-holiday quarter” during an appearance at the virtual Jefferies Interactive Entertainment.
Last month, Microsoft also teased its line-up of Xbox Series X|S games for the new year. It included a number of third-party games such as first-person shooter Scorn and Bloober Team’s The Medium, as well as first-party titles like Halo Infinite and Psychonauts 2.
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