Microsoft ran out of Xboxes at a Halo tournament, used dev kits instead

[Lightwreather]

Summary

It's been over a year since release, and you still can’t buy a new Xbox at a reasonable price for Christmas. And neither can Microsoft. At the first Halo tournament of the season, the company ran out of Xboxes and provided players in the open bracket with dev kits.

 

Quotes

Quote

You might think that being the actual maker would help Microsoft find enough Xbox consoles, but apparently not. At least they’re not hoarding them!

A new season of the Halo Championship Series kicked off on Friday and is continuing into the weekend (you can watch the streams here). As of writing, there are four teams still competing for first place out of the 32 that entered the tournament.

By now, the players will each have a genuine Xbox Series X. But at the beginning of the tournament some of the players were using Xbox dev kits in their "retail mode," according to Halo’s esports lead, Tahir Hasandjekic, also known as Tashi...

Quote

Microsoft resorted to using Xbox Series X dev kits (not pictured) to run the first big Halo Infinite tournament, the Halo Championship Series' Raleigh Major, this weekend. Simply put, the company couldn't find enough retail consoles to use — the "global supply chain shortage is real," 343 Industries' eSports lead Tahir Hasandjekic said.

The dev kits are "functionally identical" to off-the-shelf consoles and will operate in that mode, Hasandjekic added. They don't look quite the same, but competitors shouldn't notice any differences from the systems they have at home.

My thoughts

I honestly, find this quite hilarious and ironic. The maker (Designer if you're being pedantic) of the Xbox themselves were unable to provide enough retail units for a tournament that they (I presume) themselves are hosting.  Welp, If you're looking for an xbox, good luck to you.

Sources

Techspot (Quote 1)

Engadget (Quote 2)

Kotaku

Tahir Hasandjekic - Twitter

[WhitetailAni]

I wonder if anyone snatched one by switching it with their Xbox?

Not likely but a thought

[dizmo]

Good on them for offering as many as they can to the public and not hoarding some somewhere for some reason. 

[Eaglerino]

29 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Good on them for offering as many as they can to the public and not hoarding some somewhere for some reason. 

instead the scalpers have them all

[Helpful Tech Witch]

25 minutes ago, Eaglerino said:

instead the scalpers have them all

I mean not if they’re doing their job, the whole point of scalping is not having them for long

[leadeater]

35 minutes ago, Eaglerino said:

instead the scalpers have them all

 

9 minutes ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

I mean not if they’re doing their job, the whole point of scalping is not having them for long

Some retailers clearly just need to do a better job, as well as Microsoft's supply chain management and punishment. Here you cannot purchase an Xbox or PS5 online and you must go in store, pay in full, and provide valid ID (drivers license) and then you can purchase one and only one, ever. While this restriction is in place anyway.

[Dabombinable]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

Some retailers clearly just need to do a better job, as well as Microsoft's supply chain management and punishment. Here you cannot purchase an Xbox or PS5 online and you must go in store, pay in full, and provide valid ID (drivers license) and then you can purchase one and only one, ever. While this restriction is in place anyway.

EB games are quite strict with the way they handled PS5 & Xbox orders. Before and after launch.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Summary

It's been over a year since release, and you still can’t buy a new Xbox at a reasonable price for Christmas. And neither can Microsoft. At the first Halo tournament of the season, the company ran out of Xboxes and provided players in the open bracket with dev kits.

 

Quotes

My thoughts

I honestly, find this quite hilarious and ironic. The maker (Designer if you're being pedantic) of the Xbox themselves were unable to provide enough retail units for a tournament that they (I presume) themselves are hosting.  Welp, If you're looking for an xbox, good luck to you.

Sources

Techspot (Quote 1)

Engadget (Quote 2)

Kotaku

Tahir Hasandjekic - Twitter

Meanwhile, Ethereum miners and scalpers have all the available inventory, logistics channels be damned.

 

As it is, I don't think I'd buy an Xbox Series whatever or PS5 because they're not available, scalped, and quite frankly I can get nearly everything I want to play on the PC anyway. Even if the ports tend to suck. And to be fair, for some reason Square-Enix seems to completely blow it on their PC ports of everything except their MMORPG's, every time. XV? the game just explodes if you use the nVidia gameworks features. No surprise with 7 Remake. Then there was Neir Automata and Replicant which somehow both had issues on the PC versions that crippled them compared to their PS4 versions. Then there's the crappy mobile-ported-to-pc versions of Final Fantasy 5, 6 and Chrono Trigger (which at least got a fix.) 5 and 6? Pixel Remasters in Unity.

 

 

 

[iEimis]

Strangely, XSX has been sitting in stock at UK retailers over the last week. You could buy it direct from Microsoft for around 2 days last week, and this morning it’s been in stock at Amazon for over 3 hours. To me sounds like the tournament was just poorly planned.

[FRD]

That's so weird to hear. Here in Europe in the past few weeks, stocks and piles of Xbox Series X have been popping up a lot in stores. Only physical stores stock, just not online.

Some even getting batches of 30 Xbox's at once, which it a pretty good amount for people to get one if they're quick.

Just like the comment above, they're getting easier to come by. PS5s on the other hand...

[GoodBytes]

The reality is simple. It's not scalpers, it's not miners (for GPUs) to blame... it is Santa!

He knows everyone is asking for these things... billions have asked and are asking for these things at the same time. And so, he is the one that is ordering everything all year round to meet xmas wish list demand!

 

I mean if we think about it: let's look at GPUs, Nvidia/AMD says that they are producing a lot more than normal, AIBs are selling to retail stores only, and retail stores are saying that they are aren't getting any! It's like they magically disappear... the only person with magic... is... Santa!

 

Cancel Santa, I say!

Get your pitch forks out people! Why get a free XBox, PS5's and GPU for xmas, when you can go and buy one today? Stop Santa, so that it will all be available on retail stores!

 

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

The reality is simple. It's not scalpers, it's not miners (for GPUs) to blame... it is Santa!

He knows everyone is asking for these things... billions are asked at the same time. And so he is the one that is ordering everything.

 

I mean if we think about it: let's look at GPUs, Nvidia/AMD says that they are producing a lot more than normal, and AIBs are selling to retail stores only, and retail stores saying that they are aren't getting any. It's like they magically disappear... the only person with magic... is... Santa!

 

Cancel Santa, I say!

Get your pitch forks out people! Why get a free XBox and PS5's and GPU for xmas? When you can go and buy one today if Santa wasn't mass ordering them!

 

I mean yeah Christmas has created a spike in demand but it doesn't help that the supply was already unable to meet demand before Christmas shopping even started. The spike in demand only made it worse. And yeah mining has certainly contributed to the high demand for gpus as well so to say it's only one thing driving demand is ridiculous. 

[Invalid Human]

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

The reality is simple. It's not scalpers, it's not miners (for GPUs) to blame... it is Santa!

He knows everyone is asking for these things... billions have asked and are asking for these things at the same time. And so, he is the one that is ordering everything a year round to meet xmas wishlist demand!

 

I mean if we think about it: let's look at GPUs, Nvidia/AMD says that they are producing a lot more than normal, AIBs are selling to retail stores only, and retail stores are saying that they are aren't getting any! It's like they magically disappear... the only person with magic... is... Santa!

 

Cancel Santa, I say!

Get your pitch forks out people! Why get a free XBox, PS5's and GPU for xmas, when you can go and buy one today? Stop Santa, so that it will all be available on retail stores!

 

#SantaIsOverParty

[suicidalfranco]

4 hours ago, FRD said:

That's so weird to hear. Here in Europe in the past few weeks, stocks and piles of Xbox Series X have been popping up a lot in stores. Only physical stores stock, just not online.

Some even getting batches of 30 Xbox's at once, which it a pretty good amount for people to get one if they're quick.

Just like the comment above, they're getting easier to come by. PS5s on the other hand...

isn't santa supposed to produce them in his own workshop at the north pole?

[GoodBytes]

19 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

isn't santa supposed to produce them in his own workshop at the north pole?

The issue is that Santa elf's have been trained for years and years in doing wood working. Sadly, spoiled kids these days don't want wood sleds or a cup-and-ball toy... nha, those are boring now... they want their fancy graphX and electronics... Santa can't make it's elf's pass from being wood workers to highly specialized computer engineers and start building a special chip fab in the North Pole just like that. Not to mention, also, keep itself up-to-date with the latest technology to produce the needed chips.

 

So now all the elf's are now spamming "F5" on warehouses inventory databases (hacked into), and at the press of button have the parts teleported to Santa workshop (and adjusts the figured in the warehouse computer systems to hide all traces) for gift wrapping and ready for distribution on the night of the 24th turning 25th

 

[Salv8 (sam)]

10 hours ago, Kisai said:

As it is, I don't think I'd buy an Xbox Series whatever or PS5 because they're not available, scalped, and quite frankly I can get nearly everything I want to play on the PC anyway.

i agree, if a games available on pc you bet i'm getting the pc version.

downside is not all games are getting... well it's less porting these days since it's just x64 on both pc and major consoles, it's more, supporting other platforms.

anyways, not all games are getting pc ports, newer games are gonna get pc 'ports', spiderman miles morales is getting a pc 'port' but there's no word if spiderman ps4 is getting the same treatment.

 

and thats current gen, old gen games are NEVER getting a 'port' to pc because either it's not possible (e.g assembly coded games on the nes or master system), or it will take too long and there's no financial incentive to do it, or the company is so up their ass that they refuse to make games on other platforms! *cough* *cough* Nintendo *cough*

and even if you cry emulation, have you tried to get an n64 emulator to behave with your fav game? gamers want to sit down and play the game, not figure out why a controller plugin doesn't see their third party n64 usb controller they bought off of wish.

i am all for this, but company's do need to understand that a console doesn't survive forever and that either a port of the og game is required to ensure that it's preserved and accessable, or they just release an iso file so we can play it on an emulator.

 

the fact that steam allows users to continue to play games regardless if the publisher as left or been banned is a LEAGUES better then losing access to DLC you paid for and updates required to fix bugs/add new content, you will lose access to it at some point. anyone remember that ps3 scare we had? its gonna happen and after it's said and done, the only way to legitimately play the shit YOU BOUGHT will be, pirating the DLC and updates, jailbreaking the ps3 and manually installing them! what a time to be alive...

[IkeaGnome]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

isn't santa supposed to produce them in his own workshop at the north pole?

Who do you think you're buying them from when you buy them on eBay? Santa's gotta build more fabs somehow.