Microsoft is Trying to Address Xbox Series X|S Shortages
- Paul Thurrott
- Jan 04, 2021
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22
Acknowledging that it has done a poor job of getting new consoles into customers’ hands, Microsoft this past week said that it was pressing AMD for more silicon. (AMD makes the CPU and GPU components in the Xbox Series X|S.”
“We got the consoles launched and we wished we had more of them, we’re selling out too quickly,” Xbox head Phil Spencer admitted during a Microsoft podcast that was published December 31. “I get some people [asking] ‘Why didn’t you build more, why didn’t you start earlier, why didn’t you ship them earlier?’ I mean all of those things [are] 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 of the assembly lines going.”
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So no surprises there, but Spencer also said that he called AMD president and CEO Lisa Su to find out how Microsoft could get more CPUs and GPUs. “How do we get more?” he asked. “So it’s something that we’re constantly working on.”
The problem for Microsoft, of course, is that AMD also supplies internal components for the PlayStation 5 series, and it’s likely that Sony’s consoles are even more of a priority for AMD.
“It’s not just us,” Spencer says on the podcast. “Obviously, PlayStation 5 is in very tight supply. 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.”
In November, the software giant admitted that Xbox Series X|S supply shortages would continue until at least April 2021. Spencer did not elaborate on the schedule.