Microsoft is no longer making Xbox One consoles

Microsoft is no longer making Xbox One consoles

 

Microsoft and Sony are struggling to keep up with demand for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. While Sony plans to keep manufacturing the PlayStation 4 for the time being to make up for its shortfall of current-gen consoles, the Xbox One is no more.

We learned in July 2020 that Microsoft had discontinued the Xbox One X and Xbox One S Digital Edition by that point. Now, it has emerged the company quietly stopped making the Xbox One S by the end of that year too. “To focus on production of Xbox Series X/S, we stopped production for all Xbox One consoles by the end of 2020,” Xbox’s senior director of console product marketing Cindy Walker told The Verge.

It seems the strategy has paid off. Xbox head Phil Spencer told The New York Times this week that Microsoft has sold more of the Series X and Series S at this point in their lifecycle than it has with any previous Xbox generation, though he didn’t reveal actual sales figures. Analyst Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners said that would put shipments of Series X/S at more than 12 million units.

While the more powerful Series X typically sells out minutes after every stock drop (it doesn’t help that scalpers are using bots to snap them up), the Series S isn’t hard to come by at this point. It’s available to buy at the time of writing in the US, UK and Canada at retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop and Walmart. Given that the Series S can handle pretty much everything the Xbox One can — except for playing discs — it doesn’t make a ton of sense for Microsoft to keep making that console.

It’s a slightly different story for Sony. Save for the disc drive, there’s no difference between the two PS5 models. Given the high demand (Sony had sold 13.4 million units by October 2021) and the ongoing supply chain crisis, it’s harder for most people to score one of those consoles than a Series S right now. As such, Sony told Bloomberg on Wednesday it will keep making the PS4 (which uses less advanced components than the PS5) in 2022, despite reportedly planning to discontinue the console last year. The company's said to be making around a million PS4 units in this year.

Sony previously suggested it would support PS4 through 2024. Several of its first-party exclusives are coming to both the current- and previous-gen consoles this year, including Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7 and God of War Ragnarök.

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'Horizon Forbidden West' story trailer teases new characters and machines 2

 

Horizon Forbidden West is just under a month away from hitting PlayStation 4 and PS5, and Sony is ramping up its marketing push with a trailer that sheds some light on the sequel's story. The video is, unsurprisingly, packed with gorgeous visuals while offering some details on what seems to be a solid expansion of Horizon Zero Dawn's rich story.
"People are suffering. Soon, they'll starve," protagonist Aloy (Ashly Burch) says at the beginning of the trailer. "The machines, meant to help us, are out of control. I have to find a way to fix it all. The answer is somewhere out in the Forbidden West." We soon learn that, in that part of the world, war is the order of the day, so Aloy clearly has another difficult journey ahead.
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Along with some familiar faces like Varl and Erend, there are some new characters in the trailer — both friendly and hostile ones. Angela Bassett plays one of the antagonists, Regalla. She's a rebel leader who "seeks to slaughter all those who've wronged her" and has the ability to control the machines, granted to her by a returning character. The three-minute clip closes with a glimpse of a mysterious character named Tilda. Guerrilla Games told Game Informer that The Matrix star Carrie-Anne Moss plays her.
Of course, some of the machines Aloy will battle appear in the clip too. Among them is a terrifying, giant cobra-rattlesnake hybrid called the Slitherfang, which can spit streams of acid in her direction.
Overall, the trailer offers another tantalizing look at a hotly anticipated game. Given that an unfinished build reportedly leaked earlier this month, it's best for fans to tread carefully to avoid spoilers before Horizon Forbidden West arrives on February 18th..

PlayStation's Wrap-Up is back to break down your PS4 and PS5 stats for 2021 3

 

Sony has at last flipped the switch on its PlayStation 2021 Wrap-Up, allowing players to delve into their PlayStation 4 and PS5 stats for 2021. After you log into your PSN account, you'll be able to see how many hours you spent on PlayStation games last year, the five titles you played the most and how a breakdown of the trophies you scooped up.
The tool breaks down your playtime by PS4 and PS5 games, how long you spent playing on a console vs. Remote Play and how many hours you used PlayStation VR. You'll also see the number of games you played and get a code for four avatars as a bonus.
Sony took the opportunity to promote some of its games by highlighting some global community stats. In Death Stranding Director's Cut, for instance, players collectively traveled more than 45 million kilometers and delivered more than 9.4 million packages. They played more than 12 million hours of Returnal in total, while 34.6 percent of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart players unlocked all of the weapons.
Users need to be aged 18 or over and have played at least 10 hours of games on PS4 or PS5 to access their Wrap-Up. It may not work for PS5 players who haven't enabled full data collection and those who haven't consented to "Additional Data" collection on PS4 in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australasia, India and Russia.
While the PlayStation's year-end wrap-up feature is emerging much later than ones for other platforms and services, at least it takes the entire year into account. Spotify Wrapped, for instance, only covers listening data from between January and October. The latest edition of PlayStation Wrap-Up is actually arriving a little earlier than the one for 2020, which arrived last February. The tool will be available until February 20th..