Before the release of the Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft had discontinued production of the Xbox One X and Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. The company was looking to “ramp into the future” with its new consoles but continued to manufacture the Xbox One S until 2020 end. It’s now confirmed to The Verge that production on all Xbox One consoles had ended at the same time.
“To focus on production of Xbox Series X / S, we stopped production for all Xbox One consoles by the end of 2020,” said senior director of Xbox console product marketing Cindy Walker. While the move made sense at the time, it’s a somewhat different climate today. Shortages and excessive demand have reportedly led to Sony continuing to manufacture PS4 consoles after partners were previously told to stop assembly post-2021 (though it officially denies the same).
It doesn’t appear that supply is a big issue for Microsoft though. Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently said that, “Supply is actually as big as it’s ever been. It’s that demand is exceeding the supply for all of us. At this point, we’ve sold more of this generation of Xboxes, which is Xbox Series X and S, than we had any previous version of Xboxes.”
Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad estimated that over 12 million consoles have been shipped worldwide till date so focusing on the Xbox Series X/S seems to be the correct play. Time will tell how the coming year pans out so stay tuned.
