Xbox Series X|S Has Record-Setting Launch, But Microsoft Expects Shortages To Continue

Microsoft’s Xbox business is booming, and this includes huge numbers for revenue, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Live users, and console sales, the company said during an earnings call.

Xbox Game Pass is one of Microsoft’s key strategies for next-gen, and the subscription service now has 18 million subscribers, which is up from 15 million that was announced in September. The addition of 3 million subscribers might be lower than some might have imagined, considering the holidays and other factors, but this might have been related to how Xbox Series X|S consoles have been and continue to be hard to find due to sell-outs around the world.

Despite that, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the Xbox Series X|S consoles enjoyed a strong start. Microsoft sold more Xbox Series X and S consoles during their launch month than any previous Xbox console over the same time frame, the executive said. There isn’t a perfect comparison to any previous generation, as this is the first time that Microsoft launched two new Xbox models at launch instead of just one.

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Microsoft’s Averted Xbox Live Gold Disaster: WTF?

What a week! There’s so much to discuss on this episode, from Microsoft shockingly doubling the price of Xbox Live Gold only to just-as-shockingly walk it back later that same day, to the insane new Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic rumor, to Vicarious Visions merging into Blizzard to work on…Diablo 2 (!), and more!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered, featuring an interview with Brian Raffel, the cofounder of Raven Software – the studio behind Star Wars Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast, Soldier of Fortune, Heretic, Hexen, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, X-Men Origins Wolverine, and this year’s Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, among many others:

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It’s already been an incredibly fun year of Xbox coverage, and the best is yet to come. Join us! Oh, and feel free to leave us a video Loot Box question below using Yappa and you might be featured on an upcoming episode!

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.