Microsoft expects to have a limited number of Xbox Series consoles until June

Mike Spencer, chief of Microsoft’s Investor Relations department, expects the Xbox Series shortfalls to be cleared by June. At the end of last year, Microsoft still assumed that the consoles would be sufficiently stocked in April.

It’s unclear whether the later month is a result of supply issues or higher demand. Spencer told The New York Times only that the company sold every Xbox it made last quarter and that inventory will likely be “limited” into June. Spencer doesn’t specify whether he’s talking about the Series S or Series X deficiencies. Last November, Xbox CFO Tom Stuart said that April’s supply would match demand. At the time, Stuart said the shortages were due to the growing gaming market and did not mention production capacity issues.

Presumably the Xbox shortages have to do with AMD’s chip shortages. AMD CEO Lisa Su recently spoke of a ‘certain tightness’ during the first half of 2021. She was referring to the PC market and gaming market, although it is not clear whether she also meant consoles. Su says there is a larger capacity available for the second half of the year. AMD supplies the CPU and GPU of the Xbox Series consoles, just like the PlayStation 5 consoles, which are also limited in availability.

Microsoft does not say how many Xbox Series consoles it has sold to date. However, in the last quarter of 2020, the company had gaming revenues of more than $5 billion for the first time. Xbox sales were up 86 percent in those three months. Microsoft’s entire revenue in the previous quarter was $41.3 billion.