So, believe it or not, the Xbox One is officially dead. Not even in a jokey “irrelevant now the Series X is out” way - it’s actually gone and buried, and it has been for some time now, despite the fact that the new-gen consoles are still so difficult to get hold of.
Speaking to Verge, Cindy Walker, senior director of Xbox console product marketing, said: “To focus on production of Xbox Series X/S, we stopped production for all Xbox One consoles by the end of 2020.”
While you're here, check out this amazing process of making a carbon fiber Xbox controller.
I’m sure I can’t be the only one who still frequently sees Xbox Ones out in the wild (and significantly more often than the new-gen consoles, too), so it’s surprising to hear that no more of them had actually been in production for so long. All those consoles sitting on the shelves are simply leftover stock from well over a year ago, which is frankly a little sad, somehow.
On the other hand, Sony have opted to do the complete opposite, as it was recently confirmed that they’ll be continuing their production of PS4s throughout this year. According to a report by Bloomberg, they’d previously planned to stop making them last year, but due to the shortage of PS5s, decided they’d keep going instead.
It’s believed that a further one million PS4s are going to be manufactured this year, which definitely feels like a lot when you’d imagine the majority of people in the world who have any desire to own a new PlayStation would much rather get a PS5. That said, according to figures from Famitsu, in Japan alone, the PS4 sold 103K units last year, which funnily enough was 8K more than all the Xbox Series X/S sales (Xbox never really did take off massively in Japan). So there’s still certainly some level of demand, believe it or not.
Back to Microsoft’s domain though, if you have any desire to own a brand new and sealed Xbox One, now’s your time to grab one before they eventually disappear. That said, they’ve survived quite comfortably for over a year already, so there’s probably no massive rush.
Featured Image Credit: Louis-Philippe Poitras via Unsplash, Konami