Xbox Series X and S shortages force Microsoft to seek help from AMD

Supply issues have hampered the deployment of the latest generation of video game consoles. Even now, almost two months after the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S released, Microsoft is still working to meet demand and has reportedly contacted chipmaker AMD to speed up production on its side.

AMD makes the GPU and CPU for both consoles, so if it is able to push its chips faster, Microsoft could, in theory, produce more consoles per expansion. As spotted by VGC, Microsoft is “working as hard as possible” to pump more systems and has even reached out to AMD for help, according to Xbox manager Phil Spencer in a recent appearance on the Major Nelson Radio Podcast Hosted by Larry Hyrb, Xbox Live Programming Director

“I have people [asking], ‘why haven’t you built more? Why didn’t you start earlier? Why didn’t you ship them sooner? I want to say, all of those things, ”Spencer said. “It’s really a question of physics and engineering. We’re not holding them back: we’re building them as fast as possible. We have all the assembly lines running. I was on the phone last week with [CEO and president] Lisa Su at AMD [asking], “How can we get more? How can I get more? So this is something that we are constantly working on.

In November, Xbox CFO Tim Stuart predicted that Xbox’s supply issues could last up to at least april. In 2020, Microsoft shipped around 3.3 million units of its high-end Xbox Series X, per Statistaand sold approximately 21,000 Xbox Series X and S units in Japan during launch.

However, Microsoft isn’t the only one struggling: competitor Sony faces similar shortages for its next-gen console, the PlayStation 5, which also relies on AMD for its GPU and processor.

“But it’s not just us, I think the game has really taken off in 2020,” Spencer told Hyrb. “Obviously the PlayStation 5 is very limited. When you look at graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia … there’s just a lot of interest in games right now and console sales are just a sign of that, game sales are a sign of it, and the material is scarce.

However, chipmakers like AMD and Nvidia already have their own supply issues. AMD struggled to meet demand for its Ryzen 5000 series processors last year. A global shortage of GDDR6 memory has would have helped bottleneck production of AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs and Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series GPUs, and things shouldn’t get better until at least February. It could also slow down the production of next-gen consoles, as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S use GDDR6 RAM.

It is therefore not certain that AMD can even respond to Microsoft’s call to action. Of course, the coronavirus pandemic and the rush to distribute vaccines could also affect global supply lines. And then there is the scalpers pick up available inventory to sell at a markup. A recent analysis estimates that eBay scalpers have made more than $ 82 million in sales since September selling next-gen consoles and AMD and Nvidia chips.