I remember the days on GAF when people said that making the Series S would be the secert win for MS versus Playstation. And that it was such a good idea, that PS should have had a PS5 Mini.
S has nothing to do with Xs component difficulties. I keep seeing people have brain farts coming to this conclusion.
The S sku not existing would barely change anything for assembly.
In fact, would Xbox even have 10M sales right now if it wasn't for the S selling during these problems? Probably only 5-7M if X was by itself.
Phil took things as they came instead of planning ahead when it became obvious this would be a problem in 2021. COVID delayed openings and the last of the restriction policies globally that year gave him enough time to do so, but he didn't.
You can only blame Xbox for this situation. They started the generation on good footing, and now there's a chance that's all about to go away.
Coincidentally. The games expected to help Xbox Series X|S back in the early days were also all delayed because of bad or lack of decision making.
Game Pass only works if there's games on it people want to buy a console for, but all the games that were marketed to be those didn't come out because of delays. Even Halo was delayed need we forget.
Almost 3 years later and that leeway is almost gone.