It seems that neither Microsoft nor Sony had a good Christmas last year, with large amounts of unsold consoles due to lower than expected demand. This now has consequences, and according to Businesstoday (via Install Base) both companies are now cutting production.
Sony is expected to halve production in the entire 1st quarter (from 1 million units/month to just 500,000), while Microsoft has reportedly requested “complete shutdown of Xbox in the first quarter”, which means that no new consoles will be produced during the 1st quarter. Both are quite startling, as a 50% cut shows that Sony has miscalculated demand for the console, or worse, that interest has waned among potential new buyers. And for Microsoft, it’s even worse. It’s nothing new for console production to be temporarily halted (it happened with the GameCube in 2003), but it’s a very bad sign of low interest among gamers – and it may also explain why we’re getting a new strategy from Xbox next week.
Although the source is good, there is still no official confirmation. And although the poor Christmas sales are a warning, the Xbox Series S/X has sold at almost the same pace as the Xbox One, while the PlayStation 5 has had a very good generation so far. Hopefully it’s not a trend but a temporary hiccup.
2024-02-08 13:30:14
#Rumor #Large #quantities #unsold #PS5 #Xbox #consoles #lead #production #cuts
