The Redmond-based company wants to use the same approach as Sony – but the boxing gloves might punch back.

This weekend, we talked about how Jim Ryan, the president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment said that they plan a global launch for the PlayStation 5, meaning they want the console to be available everywhere by the end of 2020. They didn’t do it with the PlayStation 4, and they especially did not do it with the PlayStation 2 either. Now, we hear Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, saying the same thing we heard from Ryan!

Spencer showed up on the Talking Games with Reggie and Harold podcast, which is co-hosted by Reggie Fils-Aime, the former American president of Nintendo. Spencer said it’s unlikely that Microsoft will delay the Xbox Series X to 2021. The company finished its newest hardware review, and he feels good about the global supply chain (which should be parts manufacturer – assembly – distributor – retailer) as well.

„It feels like we’ll be able to get enough units. We’re pretty committed, as we’ve talked about, to a worldwide launch, which regretfully we didn’t do with Xbox One. It took us months and months to hit some of the incredibly important markets. The worldwide launch is important to us,” Spencer said. (They wouldn’t have had more success with a global, simultaneous Xbox One launch: the X1 cost 100 dollars more than the PlayStation 4 – 500 vs. 400 – due to forcing a Kinect into each bundle. The Kinect is long dead.)

Spencer also said that they are making progress with their games and software, but they still have issues with things that require physical collaboration (namely motion capture, voice acting, and music recording) due to the coronavirus. „On the games side, things that are pre-content complete might be impacted more than the things that are post-content complete,” he said. He also acknowledged that they had logistical hurdles regarding quality assurance and supplying test consoles to people.

The Xbox Series X will likely be shown in July during Microsoft’s stream. Its pricing is yet to be announced, and it applies to the PlayStation 5, too.

Source: Gamesindustry

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