Xbox Boss Says Console Supply Issues Will Continue Into 2022 (videogameschronicle.com) 26
The head of Microsoft's games business told The Wrap that a shortage of chips wasn't the only thing stopping the company getting as many Xbox Series X/S consoles onto store shelves as it would like. From a report: "I think it's probably too isolated to talk about it as just a chip problem," he said. "When I think about, what does it mean to get the parts necessary to build a console today, and then get it to the markets where the demand is, there are multiple kind of pinch points in that process. And I think regretfully it's going to be with us for months and months, definitely through the end of this calendar year and into the next calendar year. The thing that's most disappointing is just the fan disappointment," Spencer continued. "People really want this new generation of consoles -- they're good consoles, both from us and the other platform holders -- and they want the new functionality. We're working hard to bring them to market but it's going to be a challenge that we'll work through for quite a while."
So add MS the list (Score:2)
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competitive edge.
for faceless billionaires is this game a problem.
from a maker point of view.
how could this issue be side stepped
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competitive edge.
And how would selling fewer products because of a shortage be a "competitive edge" especially when MS and Sony can selling as many consoles as they can make. How is it competitive edge that auto manufacturers will have to shut down production lines and take less profit.
for faceless billionaires is this game a problem.
You do understand that these shortages means less money for those "faceless billionaires" right? I do not credit them with a large sense of altruism. I do credit them with greed and looking out for their own self interest. Not being able to s
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Kudos to you for doing an actual response. I thought for sure that post was just gibberish but you seemed to have cracked the code.
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decoding.
each line is a thought.
multiple lines are connected thoughts.
a connected thought is correlative
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consider.
supply vs demand economics.
the buying public is being played.
like a banjo.
makers are a wild card
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Articles I've seen (and possibly you as well) seem to indicate the chip shortage will run into 2023. That must be one vast conspiracy to keep things going that long.
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General manufacturing shortage (Score:5, Interesting)
I feel that this chip shortage is just one facet of a much larger issue. We're seeing shortages of all kinds of manufactured goods. Home office supplies are in short supply. Global chlorine supply is down. Food supply for particular markets such as for school lunches is down. And all of this isn't because there is a lack of raw resources, we're just not making the completed product/critical component or the completed product/component can't get where it needs to go.
And from what I understand, the issues causing it are diverse as well. From showing the short comings of just-in-time manufacturing, how badly the global distribution of the vaccines has been going, how nationalism sentiments are starting to show how much some nations relied on foreign workers/goods within their borders, and how historically poor wages are now starting to show the problems associated with it. And yeah none of it is an absolute, JIT manufacturing might learn something from this. The WHO and first world nations have some failures, and people within who routinely roadblock efforts, to address for getting vaccines in the hands of people who move the global economy. Making everything domestic production has growing pains and perhaps there's a point to be addressed with work conditions and pay, or maybe these nationalist ambitions didn't have a solid foundation and need to be seriously reevaluated. I'm pretty sure the Slashdot crowd has opinions on what needs to be done. I'm absolutely all ears on what anyone thinks is the underlying issues at hand and what the solutions are, this is a very fascinating thing unfolding in front of us all, at least to me.
The point being is this pandemic has shown a lot of serious cracks in the way the global economy has been built and for me, this feels like a stage rehearsal for bigger catastrophe ahead. If a 0.09 micron virus can derail this much of the global economy, there's some serious rethinking needed, in my opinion, on how exactly all of this was built. Because it doesn't feel very fault tolerant.
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If a 0.09 micron virus can derail this much of the global economy, there's some serious rethinking needed, in my opinion, on how exactly all of this was built. Because it doesn't feel very fault tolerant.
Well, the thing is that fault tolerance always has a cost. There used to be a case for adding some padding throughout the process - having inventory on hand, enough personnel to cover extra shifts, cash reserves, and so forth...but those things cost money, and are never a profit center.
There is always a balance to be struck, and it's not always easy to figure out where that is. Youtuber LGR did an unboxing of a new-in-box Thinkpad from the Pentium II era, I think...someone found it in storage, bought as a s
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Well, the thing is that fault tolerance always has a cost. There used to be a case for adding some padding throughout the process - having inventory on hand, enough personnel to cover extra shifts, cash reserves, and so forth...but those things cost money, and are never a profit center.
There is always a balance to be struck, and it's not always easy to figure out where that is. Youtuber LGR did an unboxing of a new-in-box Thinkpad from the Pentium II era, I think...someone found it in storage, bought as a spare, never used. That thing probably cost the company that bought it nearly $2,000 in 1997 dollars, and it was thrown away over 20 years later, never to be utilized. While it made for an lovely Youtube video, I'm sure anyone who got caught lighting twenty $100 bills on fire wouldn't be gainfully employed for very long...but the distinction between that and buying a laptop that would never be used by anyone is a distinction without a difference, from an accounting perspective.
I think a better comparison would be insurance... sure, having an extra laptop costs extra money, but to offset that you don't need to buy the "same day onsite repair service". After all, compared both what a company is paying people - and the value of the work they are doing - the cost of a laptop is peanuts. Routines like this is very common. What's unusual is that it hasn't been rotated into the pool of laptops in use at some point, to avoid it becoming obsolete.
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then go back to the old ways of making lots of stuff for your customers to build their products and when tech changes they will be left with useless parts they have to sell at big discounts. JIT started with Toyota and became big with Dell who were able to upgrade their SKU's a lot faster than other computer makers as new tech came out.
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With school lunches being down, that food should have found its way into the regular system which should have caused prices to drop. That's not happening. As everyone knows, food prices have been rising for well over a year.
What happen
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Many of these supply issues come down to stupidity. Yes, places shut down in an effort to restrict the spread of covid and yes, production lines were cut or slowed for the same reason, but to wholesale cancel your chip orders as many companies did, to slaughter millions of animals and bury them rather than get some money for them and keep not only the supply lines going but ensuring you have stock for next year, to do all the stupid things companies did is pure incompetence.
That is a gross simplification. And what about those companies that did not do either of those things? One problem we are seeing is shipping has been disrupted. For example, the port of Long Beach is bottlenecked and ships are waiting weeks to offload; at the same time, the price of shipping a container across the Pacific is higher than it has ever been. If you are a company relying on a shipment for parts not only do you have to pay more but you have to wait longer. That means your customers also have to w
Unlikely, this is hurting their best revenue (Score:2)
I wonder if a lot of these console makers are just taking advantage of this situation so they can keep console prices high for the next few years. I'm seeing people falling over themselves to pay $1000 for a PS5, and some people are happy they got one for more than that from a scalper who bought from a scalper.
For the price of a console, you can get a decent PC and a so-so graphics card, and be able to have a far wider game library at one's disposal (GOG, Steam, etc.) To boot, the PC isn't going to be useless, while the console will be bricked as soon as the maker turns off the network the always-on DRM need to function. Plus, a PC can always be upgraded.
Sony and MS are not getting 1k per console. That's all going to lowlife scalpers. They are probably losing a ton of money because consoles are typically loss leaders to get you to buy overpriced games or pay for a gaming pass or various overpriced peripherals, like extra controllers. This is fucking them over.
MS definitely wanted to sell a ton of these and get your sweet recurring revenue for the games pass. You underestimate how many people sign up and forget they're paying a monthly fee, stop play
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I wonder if a lot of these console makers are just taking advantage of this situation so they can keep console prices high for the next few years. I'm seeing people falling over themselves to pay $1000 for a PS5, and some people are happy they got one for more than that from a scalper who bought from a scalper.
You do know all of that $1000 does not go to Sony and MS, right? Scalpers buy the console at the retail prices then mark them up. Those scalpers make increase in profit, not Sony and MS. How does this help Sony and MS to keep console prices high?
For the price of a console, you can get a decent PC and a so-so graphics card, and be able to have a far wider game library at one's disposal (GOG, Steam, etc.) To boot, the PC isn't going to be useless, while the console will be bricked as soon as the maker turns off the network the always-on DRM need to function. Plus, a PC can always be upgraded.
Where have you been in the last year? Have you seen graphic card prices? While the graphics capabilities of these consoles are not the same as high end discrete cards, they are not $50 cards you can find in a thrift store either. The discrete card you can buy that i
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Who cares? (Score:2)
There are virtually no exclusive games on either console so why buy into those ecosystems?