Today marks the day that the Xbox Series X/S launches in the UK and the US. As expected, it’s not easy to get your hands on one of the new consoles on launch day, and you’ll be lucky to get one in 2020 at all. Amazon UK has already sent out some emails apologizing for being unable to fulfill the delivery of pre-ordered consoles and went out of stock almost immediately after 8 am BST this morning.
Due to a mix of the Coronavirus pandemic and high-demand for the console, there are no consoles available in shops. You can’t just walk into town or drive to a supermarket – both Xbox and PlayStation have announced there won’t be consoles available in-shop. Multiple retailers went out of stock within minutes of the launch time.
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The Microsoft online store and Amazon were the first to go down. The stock was very limited, although if you did manage to order from either of these platforms you can expect your Xbox to arrive faster than from anywhere else. You can currently pre-order the console from GAME.co.uk, although it’s clear they won’t be able to deliver these orders until well into December.
Amazon is still having some issues with delivering its current batch of pre-orders. They’re not expected to put new orders onto the platform for some time, although it is likely there’ll be another batch ready for the extended Christmas period.
As expected, the Series X was the first to sell out, with some retailers still offering the Xbox Series S at the time of writing. Series X is the true next-gen console whereas Series S is like the Xbox One X but with some optimization for next-gen titles, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and the new Call of Duty arriving later this year.
The Microsoft Store is still advertising its pay-monthly package for the Xbox, but that package is handled by Game and Smyths in the UK – both of which have sold out of the console at the time of writing, so I’m not sure how that’s exactly meant to work…
The release of the PS5 isn’t likely to go any better later this week. It’s a tricky time to be launching anything, let alone something as high in demand as these new consoles.