Although coronavirus has wreaked havoc on supply chains around the world, Microsoft’s Xbox chief Phil Spencer has no fears about the pandemic impacting Xbox Series X availability this holiday season.
In an interview with former Nintendo boss Reggie Fils-Aimé, Spencer said that Microsoft has been forced “to work through some challenges” in its Xbox Series X supply chain, but the console is still on track for a 2020 holiday season launch.
“[We] feel good about timelines, feel really good about this holiday,” he said.
Coronavirus has shuttered supply chains around the world since manufacturers in China were forced to close their doors in February to halt the virus outbreak. While those plants have since reopened, the coronavirus spread around the world has forced the closing of facilities across Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere. Getting them back online has proven to be a long and arduous task.
Those realities have shone a light on both Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5, which were both slated for release later this year before the pandemic hit. Neither Sony nor Microsoft has changed its launch schedule, but speculation surfaced over whether supply chains could push their releases into next year.
Spencer, however, said that he and his fellow executives still “feel good about” Microsoft’s supply chain.
“The hardware side, it feels like we’ll be able to get enough units,” he said.
But even that comment may not allay every fear players have. There will apparently be enough Xbox Series X units to satisfy hardware demand this holiday season, but Spencer’s comments seem to clearly focus on hardware and not software.
Indeed, stay-at-home orders have caused widespread delays across the gaming industry, which Spencer acknowledged in his interview with Fils-Aimé. He stopped short of saying whether any Xbox Series X launch titles could be pushed back.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a Digital Trends request for comment on the status of the launch games and will uopdate this story when we hear back.
For its part, Sony has similarly expressed confidence that the PlayStation 5 won’t hit any manufacturing snags and should be available in ample supply this holiday season. Whether such availability will also extend to PlayStation 5 launch games is unknown.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.