At a recent Jefferies Interactive Entertainment conference, Xbox CFO Tim Stuart affirmed that Microsoft is forecasting supply shortages for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S during the Holiday season. The executive adds that the shortage could be sustained until April 2021.
I think we’ll continue to see supply shortages as we head into the post-holiday quarter, so Microsoft’s Q3 (January 1 to March 31, 2021). And then when we get to Q4 (April 1 to June 30) all of our supply chain continuing to go full speed heading into kind of the pre-summer months.
And that’s where I start to — I expect to see a little bit of the demand — the supply profile, meeting the demand profile. You’ll be outside of a holiday window. We’ll have supply cranking over the next, what, 4, 5, 6 months. And that’s when I expect to see really that demand profile start to be met, which will be really, really great. And really, what that’s going to do is, once we get into that world of a great high end, call it, a great high-powered console, plus that lower-end SKU for value, I think we’re going to start to see some real velocity kick up, which I’m really excited to see.
The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S’ launch was an immense success for Microsoft and its Xbox team, but apparently, they underestimated the hype fans have for the next-gen console, not enough units are being shipped.
On launch day, Amazon could not ship all the pre-orders they had booked for the Xbox Series X|S, the hype has also seen the console’s pre-orders sold out in Japan, players around the world want to get the most powerful console as soon as possible, and the allocation by country, shipment, and manufacture’s yield is a complicated topic that it’s not as clear as customers would like to be.
Source: Seeking Alpha – Video Games Chronicle
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