Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
With how few Xbox Series X units are available for purchase, I can't help but wonder if Microsoft deemed it too expensive to sell the XSX in small quantities and decided to create a new sku with cost savings in mind ahead of Starfield's release.
I can't imagine that they still can't produce these units. The supply chain has improved for basically every product out there. Laptops used to have extremely long lead times and now you can get them pretty quickly, yet it's as hard if not harder to find an XSX unless you pay for it with a bundle. It seems clear that they're trying to protect their margins as best as possible. The XSX is even more difficult to find than the PS5 DE.
Speaking of which, I think Sony similarly realized that the PS5 Digital doesn't make a ton of sense either cost-wise. They barely sell the thing and they'll almost certainly discontinue it after this summer with the disk drive free PS5 standard that will certainly be a slim model. The difference is that won't be priced at $400 dollars, it'll be full-priced like the PS5 Standard. I think what they've seen is that people gravitate to digital downloads whether they have a disk drive included or not, so all they're doing is taking a 100-dollar loss (less drive cost, shipping weight, and distribution costs).
That you can buy both the XSX and the PS5 DE fairly easily direct through the manufacturers suggests that they at least have stock but aren't actively trying to widely distribute either still.
I think we can pretty easily assume PS5 DE is going to be discontinued with 95% certainty, the XSX however I think is going to be a bit more surprising. I wonder what the XSX mark 2 looks like in order for Microsoft to cut some costs like Sony has with reduced heatsinks.
I can't imagine that they still can't produce these units. The supply chain has improved for basically every product out there. Laptops used to have extremely long lead times and now you can get them pretty quickly, yet it's as hard if not harder to find an XSX unless you pay for it with a bundle. It seems clear that they're trying to protect their margins as best as possible. The XSX is even more difficult to find than the PS5 DE.
Speaking of which, I think Sony similarly realized that the PS5 Digital doesn't make a ton of sense either cost-wise. They barely sell the thing and they'll almost certainly discontinue it after this summer with the disk drive free PS5 standard that will certainly be a slim model. The difference is that won't be priced at $400 dollars, it'll be full-priced like the PS5 Standard. I think what they've seen is that people gravitate to digital downloads whether they have a disk drive included or not, so all they're doing is taking a 100-dollar loss (less drive cost, shipping weight, and distribution costs).
That you can buy both the XSX and the PS5 DE fairly easily direct through the manufacturers suggests that they at least have stock but aren't actively trying to widely distribute either still.
I think we can pretty easily assume PS5 DE is going to be discontinued with 95% certainty, the XSX however I think is going to be a bit more surprising. I wonder what the XSX mark 2 looks like in order for Microsoft to cut some costs like Sony has with reduced heatsinks.