Xbox is “working as hard as we can” to deliver more Xbox Series X|S stock

Xbox head Phil Spencer says that the company is “working as hard as we can” to deliver more Xbox Series X|S stock, which is currently unavailable in most stores (via VGC).

That comes from a new Xbox podcast, in which Spencer revealed he had gone as far as to contact AMD, who make the consoles’ CPU and GPU, to ask them to ramp up manufacturing.

Both the Xbox Series consoles and the Playstation 5 rapidly sold out following their launch in November last year, and replacement stock has been thin on the ground. Prior to the consoles’ UK launch, retailers warned that they would be unavailable without a preorder before the end of the year.

“I get some people [asking], ‘why didn’t you build more? Why didn’t you start earlier? Why didn’t you ship them earlier?'” said Spencer. “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.”

“But it’s not just us: gaming has really come into its own in 2020. 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. But we’re working as hard as we can. The teams are incredibly dedicated, and I appreciate people’s patience as we work to build more.”

Spencer has previously addressed the supply issues, stating in an interview with Shacknews that the next-gen console wars would be a matter of supply, not demand.

“Frankly, this holiday, supply is going to dictate how many consoles are sold more than demand” said Spencer. “That battle is not going to be a reflection of demand — it’ll be a reflection of supply.”

And, despite the launch of two new consoles, this holiday saw one definitive winner: the Nintendo Switch.