Xbox Series X/S sells like hot cakes
Microsoft and its retail partners started taking pre-orders for the Xbox Series X/S consoles on Tuesday morning but the whole sum of pre-allocated stock was exhausted in hours. The order process was said to be less hectic than that experience by those scrambling to place PS5 pre-orders however, sites such as GameStop still crashed under the pressure.
Microsoft's next gen consoles are top ranked in the Amazon movers and shakers lists in the US and the UK. Demand has been unprecedented, according to the official Xbox Twitter account which said "we are humbled by the record-breaking demand for Xbox Series X and S. Huge thanks to everyone for the excitement". The Xbox account held out some hope for those that couldn’t get their pre-orders in place. It said that there will be more consoles allocated to retailers on the hard launch date of 10th Nov, so gamers are encouraged to use the various queuing / signing up systems run by retailers.
Hands up those who secured an Xbox One X instead
Polygon reports that the stampede for Xbox Series X/S consoles might have resulted in quite a lot of customers adding an Xbox One X to their baskets instead. This powerful but current gen Xbox sales rank went up nearly 750 per cent on Amazon on the day. It is an easy mistake to make, and as The Verge editor Tom Warren points out, one that Microsoft PR has made previously, sort of.
I've had a similar problem with Amazon before when I bought a set of micro USB cables instead of USB Type-C cables. When you search for something, like USB Type-C cables, it doesn't take too much scrolling or many clicks until you find you are looking at related or recommended - but different spec - products. With more relevance to the topic du jour, searching 'Xbox Series X' on Amazon UK today results in a set of listings with the 'Xbox One X' in third place.
Xbox Series X/S storage expansion card pricing
With the size of modern AAA games with DLCs pushing 100 to 200GB the built-in storage capacities of the next gen consoles look like they will be the source of much gamer cursing in 2021. As standard, the Sony PS5 consoles will come packing 825GB of built-in storage. Microsoft's Xbox Series S and Xbox Series S will come with 500GB and 1TB, respectively. Thus it looks like there will be a strong market for next gen console expansion cards, especially until the consoles get revised to coming with 2TB or so as standard.
Here in the UK, various sites thought they had a strong indication as to the pricing of Xbox Series X/S 1TB expansion cards. These expansion cards feature the same custom NVMe tech as used in the internal drives. Thus they should be a superior alternative to attaching a storage device to the Xbox Series X/S USB 3.2 port. However, the pricing is a worry for next gen console buyers.
EuroGamer asserts that the 'leaked' Smyths Games pricing of a 1TB expansion card for £159 was reported in error by many news outlets. "This was down to an incorrect link in our Xbox Series X/S pre-order page yesterday, that actually pointed to the Xbox Elite Controller," explains the gaming news site. It went on to say that that there has never been such a link at Smyths and it has no idea of what the retail price for such expansion cards will be.
