Xbox Series X Supply Shortage to Last Well Into 2021

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Heavy demand for Microsoft's newest Xbox consoles are to blame

Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S
Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Series S consoles (Image credit: Xbox)

If you're one of the many who's attempting to acquire either the Xbox Series X or the Xbox Series S, you may have noticed that it's been nearly impossible. Pretty much every online or brick-and-mortar store has been picked dry, with many of them turning away potential buyers. To be blunt, it hasn't been pretty out there.

According to Microsoft, it looks that this trend may continue for quite some time. Xbox Chief Financial Officer Tim Stuart says that finding an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S in stores will be nigh impossible, and it could be well into 2021 before you can purchase either of the newest Xbox consoles.

"I think we'll continue to see supply shortages as we head into the post-holiday quarter, so Microsoft's Q3, [or] calendar Q1. And then when we get to Q4, all of our supply chain continuing to go full speed heading into kind of the pre-summer months," said Stuart during the Jefferies Interactive Entertainment Virtual Conference.

To further complicate the issue, Xbox consoles that weren't sold as pre-orders were quickly gobbled up by scalpers using bots as a way to score a quick dollar during the upcoming shopping holiday. The popular online auction site eBay is full of Xbox Series X and Xbox Series X consoles, many of which are being sold for two to three times the official MSRP. On that note, I know it's tempting to pay extra to score a console, but please don't encourage the practice by purchasing a scalped unit.

But don't think for a moment that Microsoft is the only company that's feeling the low-stock blues. Sony is experiencing the same problem and is struggling to keep the PlayStation 5 in stock. Sony has gone on record that the PS5 will not be sold in stores, with Best Buy chiming in that it doesn't expect to see either the next-gen Xbox or PlayStation consoles in stores until 2021. Not even the GPU giant, Nvidia, is immune to this, as all its newest graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3090, and RTX 3070, have been sold out since release.

Keith Mitchell
Keith Mitchell

Keith Mitchell is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He is an IT professional during the day, and a passionate lover of video games and tech after his 9-5 grind. He has a weird affinity for Soulsborne games and plays them non-stop.

14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • drivinfast247
    Darn! I guess I'll just have to play the games on my vastly superior PC.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    A lot of kids are going to stop believing in Santa this year.
    Reply
  • timbozero
    drivinfast247 said:
    Darn! I guess I'll just have to play the games on my vastly superior PC.

    If your PC is superior (let alone vastly superior), and your listed specs must be out of date as they infer it isn’t, then I can guarantee it cost 2-3 times more than my Series X ;)
    You are of course free to chose the platform you prefer and that is fair and correct, but the PC ‘master race’ is no more and has gone the same way as the last one did.
    Reply
  • drivinfast247
    timbozero said:
    If your PC is superior (let alone vastly superior), and your listed specs must be out of date as they infer it isn’t, then I can guarantee it cost 2-3 times more than my Series X ;)
    You are of course free to chose the platform you prefer and that is fair and correct, but the PC ‘master race’ is no more and has gone the same way as the last one did.

    Yes, but I already have my PC. And if you don't think my "outdated" PC is is not more powerful than your console, you are either naive or ignorant.

    And I did not mention anything in regards to value or cost.
    Reply
  • timbozero
    drivinfast247 said:
    Yes, but I already have my PC. And if you don't think my "outdated" PC is is not more powerful than your console, you are either naive or ignorant.

    And I did not mention anything in regards to value or cost.

    With the exception of generation specific games, which granted the new XBoxes are woefully short of, you are more than welcome to identify which of your PC components beat the Series X equivalent with specs for each to prove it.
    Your comment about already having the PC is correct, and I have advocated for each gamer to stick to their existing platform due to the social bonds they have forged there.
    You are right that you didn’t say anything about value or cost but your entire first post implied nothing but. It was this pseudo-troll-ness to which I replied ;)

    (Edit: for the record I also have a gaming PC, which isn’t even close to your specs and I didn’t wish to imply yours was outdated at all, just that if your sig specs were current that they weren’t going to run COD:CW at 120fps 4K RT etc like XSX does)
    Reply
  • SyDiko
    There is no shortage. The consoles have been scalped by selenium bots and put on eBay at 1-200% MSRP.
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    timbozero said:
    With the exception of generation specific games, which granted the new XBoxes are woefully short of, you are more than welcome to identify which of your PC components beat the Series X equivalent with specs for each to prove it.
    XBSX has 8 Zen 2 cores running at up to 3.8 GHz. They have an R9 3900X which is 12 Zen 2 cores running at up to 4.6 GHz. Pretty obvious winner there. GPU performance is a little trickier, given that we don't have independent results for RDNA2 yet, and it's hard to say how the consoles' power/thermal envelopes might effect performance relative to desktop. Based on AMD's results for the RX 6800, it's a bit better than a 2080 Ti. Based on specs, the 6800 is ~15% better than the XBSX GPU. So on paper we could say the 2080 Ti and XBSX GPU are roughly equivalent (if we could do a real world apples to apples comparison, I'd expect the 2080 Ti to win). Their PC has 11GB of VRAM and 16 GB of system RAM, XBSX has 16GB of RAM in total that must be split between CPU and GPU.

    timbozero said:
    just that if your sig specs were current that they weren’t going to run COD:CW at 120fps 4K RT etc like XSX does)
    The XBSX can run CoD:CW at 120 fps, or 4K, or with RT. Not all at the same time. And both 120 fps and RT also involve using dynamic resolution/upsampling techniques to get better performance by rendering at a lower resolution. If we allow for upsampling, then a 2080 Ti is indeed capable of running CoD:CW at 4K and RT at 60+ fps (using DLSS). Or 120+ FPS at native 1080p with RT off.
    Reply
  • timbozero
    TJ Hooker said:
    XBSX has 8 Zen 2 cores running at up to 3.8 GHz. They have an R9 3900X which is 12 Zen 2 cores running at up to 4.6 GHz. Pretty obvious winner there. GPU performance is a little trickier, given that we don't have independent results for RDNA2 yet, and it's hard to say how the consoles' power/thermal envelopes might effect performance relative to desktop. Based on AMD's results for the RX 6800, it's a bit better than a 2080 Ti. Based on specs, the 6800 is ~15% better than the XBSX GPU. So on paper we could say the 2080 Ti and XBSX GPU are roughly equivalent (if we could do a real world apples to apples comparison, I'd expect the 2080 Ti to win). Their PC has 11GB of VRAM and 16 GB of system RAM, XBSX has 16GB of RAM in total that must be split between CPU and GPU.


    The XBSX can run CoD:CW at 120 fps, or 4K, or with RT. Not all at the same time. And both 120 fps and RT also involve using dynamic resolution/upsampling techniques to get better performance by rendering at a lower resolution. If we allow for upsampling, then a 2080 Ti is indeed capable of running CoD:CW at 4K and RT at 60+ fps (using DLSS). Or 120+ FPS at native 1080p with RT off.

    Thank you, a well-considered, informative, and unbiased response.
    I would tend to agree with your reply and agree that the poster's spec will certainly offer advantages for things like AutoCAD, spreadsheets, video transcoding (as examples) due to its raw CPU advantage.
    That said, the article is a gaming console article and so the reply (to be relevant would be as well), and your reply I see as the comparison of posters spec vs XSX would be so close as to make it a wash.
    As I said initially, his PC would not be vastly superior and additionally (even with depreciation to today's prices) cost considerably more than said XSX.
    Reply
  • drivinfast247
    timbozero said:
    With the exception of generation specific games, which granted the new XBoxes are woefully short of, you are more than welcome to identify which of your PC components beat the Series X equivalent with specs for each to prove it.
    Your comment about already having the PC is correct, and I have advocated for each gamer to stick to their existing platform due to the social bonds they have forged there.
    You are right that you didn’t say anything about value or cost but your entire first post implied nothing but. It was this pseudo-troll-ness to which I replied ;)

    (Edit: for the record I also have a gaming PC, which isn’t even close to your specs and I didn’t wish to imply yours was outdated at all, just that if your sig specs were current that they weren’t going to run COD:CW at 120fps 4K RT etc like XSX does)
    So you are 100% certain that it's actually 4k/120fps and not 1440 or 1080p @ 120fps like every game so far?

    Edit: I see it's already been answered above.
    Reply
  • drivinfast247
    timbozero said:
    With the exception of generation specific games, which granted the new XBoxes are woefully short of, you are more than welcome to identify which of your PC components beat the Series X equivalent with specs for each to prove it.
    Your comment about already having the PC is correct, and I have advocated for each gamer to stick to their existing platform due to the social bonds they have forged there.
    You are right that you didn’t say anything about value or cost but your entire first post implied nothing but. It was this pseudo-troll-ness to which I replied ;)

    (Edit: for the record I also have a gaming PC, which isn’t even close to your specs and I didn’t wish to imply yours was outdated at all, just that if your sig specs were current that they weren’t going to run COD:CW at 120fps 4K RT etc like XSX does)

    My first post could've also been taken as means to boost my ego and back my reasoning to have invested so much money into a PC.
    Reply