It launched in the fall of 2013, but Microsoft has stopped production of the Xbox One forever.
Actually, as the company told The Verge (via IGN), this happened in late 2020, after the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S had hit the market.
The company says the reason is that it wanted to focus on producing its new consoles instead. “To focus on production of Xbox Series X / S, we stopped production for all Xbox One consoles by the end of 2020”, said Microsoft in a statement this week.
The Redmond company had already discontinued the Xbox One X and the digital edition of the Xbox One S (the one without a disc drive) in the summer of 2020. And now that it has revealed that the disc version of the Xbox One S was discontinued in late 2020, the Xbox One line of consoles is officialy dead now.
So those wanting to get hold of one of the old consoles will now have to get one in the second-hand market then. Nonetheless, the Xbox One will go down in history as one of the best-selling consoles of all time. The original Xbox One and its variants, the Xbox One X and Xbox One S (with and without the disc drive) sold about 50 million units in total.
This is despite the original Xbox One having a bad launch back in 2013 – it was overpriced and underpowered when compared to Sony’s PS4, which stole the thunder from Microsoft’s console and went on to become the top selling console of the last generation.
And while Microsoft might have stopped producing all Xbox One consoles by late 2020, Sony will keep producing the PS4 for a while longer. As a matter of fact, a Bloomberg report says that while Sony was planning to stop production of the PS4 in late 2021, it will keep making it for a while longer – actually the Japanese company plans to market another million PS4s this year according to the report.
The PS4’s less advanced architecture and the fact it’s easier to manufacture, plus the fact the PS5 has been hard to get and Sony wanting to keep gamers in its PlayStation ecosystem are the reasons behind this.
However, with Microsoft having discontinued the Xbox One S, it can focus production on its Xbox Series X/S consoles.
The Xbox Series S seems to be easier to get hold of than other next-gen consoles like the Xbox Series X and PS5, and it could be a nice alternative to Sony’s last-gen PS4 for those looking to get into console gaming at a budget price.
Read more: 5 Reasons Why the PS4 Outsold the Xbox One
Xbox One S (Microsoft Corporation)