Really? Which games?
And what was the official reason?
Seriously? You've been here since 2017 and you weren't aware of all the "releasing only on PS4" discussions? Which were also happening on other forums and social media?
The reasons were a combination of install base (outside the stronger countries) and releases not selling enough on Xbox One. There are many TP games that are on PS4 but not on Xbox One. That's not even including Japanese devs which makes it even worse.
So if MS had launched Series X without last gens game pass and without the sales of the much cheaper S they would be finished this gen..
No, they would just be far behind. The X still be in demand and would still be selling out but there would be no buffer for the dry periods without the S.
If for example XS is 45 million and PS5 is 47 million in a hypothetical, removing the S drops that to 20 million or so Xbox series consoles.
Right now the Series X is recently improving production but still not where it needs to be to have production like PS5 (which sacrificed production of PS5D to do it and MS doesn't want to sacrifice either) so without S maybe they are 10-11 million max, 8 million the floor without the S. Which with over 20 million consoles sold is a pretty big deal.
I suspect that Microsoft saw last holiday and made as many X as they can, but tripled production of the S to fill the gaps and are doing as many promos with them as possible to get as many buyers outside of BF to Cyber monday which will be the period most of the X stock will sell. S will sell during those 4 days as well but there will be more stock of it outside of that for the month of November.
I assume they will use the same strategy for December, though not as heavy on the promos.
I expect possibly in NPD alone 3 million consoles sold or more, leading the way. Any PS5 or X shortage in November customers find will be faces with a Series S on promo.
