Microsoft and Sony both had a lot of data crunching to do to determine how many of their next-gen consoles to produce for this Holiday season. Such planning gets substantially messier when one factors in that both companies have each released two different consoles, with Microsoft notably running into more production issues given the vast differences between the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S. As such, it comes to very little surprise to hear that Microsoft focused on producing more of the former than the latter leading up to both consoles’ release.

In a recent interview with The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirmed that Microsoft chose to prioritize the production of the Series X over the Series X based on the predicted demand for both consoles. “We figured that our first holiday, and probably our second holiday, you would see more of the higher end SKU, the Series X sold,” Spencer explained. “We built more Series Xs than we did Series Ss.”

Such planning certainly doesn’t help those that have yet to acquire either console, though according to Spencer, production on both consoles will likely ramp up by late next year. “Over the long run, in most cases, price wins out. If you just go back and look at previous generations and when console generations hit the real sweet spot of sales, which is one of the reasons we like having that, that’s the Series S at its price point.”

Then when we go back into next holiday, which we’re already thinking about with supply chain and build, we’re already in that framing, trying to look at what we think our ratio should be between the two.”

It’s interesting to note that Microsoft almost went with a single console launch, though ultimately the team decided to do so in case Sony had something similar planned. “The best argument against doing it was Sony,” Spencer said. “We didn’t think that they were going to do it. I’ve said it before, I have a ton of respect for what Sony does.”

The Xbox Series X/S are now available for purchase.

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