Microsoft's next-gen gaming console Xbox Series X went on sale last week and if you tried grabbing one, you must be familiar with the experience that it was not that easy. The majority of the interested buyers could not even make the purchase as the units went out of stock pretty fast. This is because of the huge demand and short supply of the consoles and unfortunately, the situation is unlikely to get better in the near future.

Tim Stuart, Xbox's Chief Financial Officer (CFO), revealed at the Jefferies Interactive Entertainment Virtual Conference that they are expecting Xbox Series X short supply to continue at least till Q1 2021. It means April 2021 is the latest Xbox fans can expect to see some sort of balance between the demand and supply.

Here is the official statement from Stuart,

“When we get to Q4, all of our supply chain [is] continuing to go full speed heading into kind of the pre-summer months. And that’s where I start to — I expect to see a little bit of the demand — the supply profile, meeting the demand profile.”

It should be noted that when Stuart says Q4, he is talking in accordance with the financial year cycle followed by Microsoft. In other words, Microsoft's Q4 is actually Q2 of the particular year which in this case will be Q2 2021. The long delay in supplies is not exactly a surprising thing as many did expect it due to the whole global pandemic situation. This is something Sony and NVIDIA are also struggling with when it comes to shipping PlayStation 5 and RTX 3080/3090 graphics cards respectively.

If you really want an Xbox Series X console as soon as possible, you can try your luck at platforms like eBay but you will surely have to pay more than the retail price. This extra pricing can go as high as double i.e. nearly $1,000. For those who cannot pay that much or simply do not want to overpay, your only bet is to keep an eye on authorized sellers' stock and be quick to grab one once it becomes available.