Microsoft's Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has reassured fans that the company is "working as hard as it can" to manufacture more Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles.
Appearing on the Major Nelson podcast (as reported by VGC), Spencer reflected on the most common questions he hears.
“I get some people, ‘why didn’t you build more? Why didn’t you start earlier? Why didn’t you ship them earlier?’ I mean, all of those things,” Spencer said.
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Microsoft "Working Hard As It Can" To Manufacture Xbox Series X and S Consoles, Phil Spencer Reveals
“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, ‘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", Spencer notes.
"Obviously, PlayStation 5 is in very tight supply. When you look at the graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, I mean 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. Hardware is in short supply, but we’re working as hard as we can."
"The teams are incredibly dedicated. I appreciate people’s patience as we work to build more."
Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it's perhaps a small miracle that any new consoles launched – something Spencer praised his teams for.
"I'm incredibly proud of how the teams did. We got the consoles launched and wish we had more of them. It's selling out too quickly. But all in all, really proud of what the teams have been able to do."
Microsoft had previously described the Series X and S launch as the "Largest Xbox Launch Ever", but still stopped shy of reporting hard numbers.
At the time, Spencer explained to The Guardian that "the people who want to pit us [Microsoft] against Sony based on who sold the most consoles lose the context of what gaming is about today,"
“There are 3 billion people who play games on the planet today, but maybe [only] 200 million households that have a video game console."
"In a way, the console space is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the overall gaming pie.”