A word of warning about Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S pre-orders

If your tastes are a bit greener than blue this season, you may have skipped the utter mayhem that was the opening of PS5 pre-orders earlier this week. Xbox is on its way though, and pre-orders for the lower-priced Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S will launch on September 22, and Microsoft has made it clear that you’ll get a bit more warning than Sony gave you. :

So that’s when you’ll have to introduce yourself if you want to try and get one of these things. But here’s the caveat: these things are going to be sold. They will likely do so in a few moments, as with the PS5. New consoles almost always sell out in pre-order, and there is absolutely no reason to assume that things will be different this time. While I expect the PS5 to outsell the Xbox Series X / S / anything else in the coming years, in these early moments, each and every next-gen console is likely to be as hard to find as any. other. I hope this is true until at least December, although if it were Microsoft I would be moving heaven and earth to try and make as many S Series consoles as possible.

Fortunately, hoping for these things is no big deal. There are no major exclusive titles coming to either system at launch, and Microsoft is even promising to bring first-party exclusives to Xbox One for something like two years. If all you have is an Xbox One PS4, you’ll still be in good shape to play all the biggest games of the holiday season. They will look a bit brighter and charge faster on new machines, of course, but they will still work on older machines.

This was already one of the weirdest console hype cycles in recent memory, thanks to COVID-19 shutting down the world and with it the chance to reveal these things at E3 as usual, not to mention causing the widespread chaos. behind the scenes we have I have also been aware. However, the release itself will also be unique, with what appears to be the smoothest transition between two generations that we’ve probably seen, to the point where I’m not sure even the concept of “console generations” actually applies. to something. plus.