It's definitely frustrating to watch. They clearly have enough demand to sell alot more consoles than they are selling, as is evident by the sellout speeds and the scalper prices.

It baffles my mind that Microsoft had such low expectations for Xbox Series sales that they failed to sign huge parts contracts before the pandemic and global semi-conductor shortage prevented them from obtaining more parts. Why did they have such low confidence in their own product leading up to launch? Sure Xbox One was a flop, but they had spent the entire generation making smart decisions and regaining consumer trust (Gamepass, studio acquisitions, courting indies, rebuilding bridges with JP pubs and studios that Mattrick had burned when he abandoned Japan in 2010), there should have been no reason for MS to expect Xbox One tier first year sales given all they had done to improve Xbox's fortunes, and yet leading up to release they signed parts contracts which would only allow Xbox One tier sales.

That seems unlikely considering that Sony is using many of the same suppliers as MS, and yet MS is shipping about 100-120k fewer weekly consoles than Sony is. The main cause of the shortages is the chipsets, and TSMC is the foundry doing both the PS5 and Xbox Series chipsets. It is also costly to break a contract, and I can't see TSMC breaking contract with MS and not doing the same to Sony.

So Sony is saying that they have secured enough parts contracts to hit 22m+ PS5's sold this fiscal year, which ends in March 2022, meaning they plan to sell 12m+ consoles in less than 6 months, more than the 10m PS5's they have already sold in 8+ months. Microsoft really needs to step up their production, this is getting ridiculous now. Phil claimed that he was being bullish in acquiring parts contracts in an interview more than a month ago, but the average manufacturing and shipping time for a console is 5 weeks and we still haven't seen a noticeable increase in Xbox shipment sizes worldwide. Unless they are storing all of these extra console they are producing in warehouses in an attempt to meet Q4 Halo and Forza demand, it seems like Phil was BSing us.

If MS doesn't step up production considerably soon they won't even hit 12m this fiscal year, they could be more than 10m behind PS5 a year into the generation soon if Phil doesn't fix these production issues. At the current weekly rates of 120-130k, Xbox Series will only hit about 9m in 2021 and 10.5m by the end of the fiscal year in March. They need to average at least 250k per week between now and the end of March to reach a respectable 15m for the fiscal year. 

9m by the end of the year number that you mention is actually the worst case scenario, because I can’t see MS not saving up a ton of consoles for holiday season.

What's the point of saving up consoles instead of selling them earlier?

The earlier they are sold, the earlier the buyers are buying games and services for them.

Demand is higher during holiday season, that’s the main reason.

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Does this mean Joe is sticking around after launch? Surely Halo Infinite's story is all done now and even if it isn't, I doubt he is only just heading into Infinite only a few months before launch to make any story adjustments when he has been with them for almost a year now, "Hello my old friend" implying he hasn't opened it up in a while, alongside the "Launch is Just The Beginning" tag.

Could be Joe deciding to stick around to work on some story expansions and already starting the next storyline for Infinite? We need Joe stories again, his recent Halo book was apparently great and starred Half-Jaw.

It may be less that they're saving already built consoles and more them planning a certain amount of consoles for certain periods, for example they target 10k consoles made for Summer and 100k for Holiday (random nonsense numbers) but I do believe it also wouldn't be that unbelievable that they would save some consoles for certain periods.

Like FH5 and HI are both launching in their FY22 Q2, I would think they would want a huge amount of consoles to sell in that period, not only to brag about it in their quarterly report to investors and their growth in comparison to FY22 Q2 but also cause it could provide them with some marketing brags too, like, "Thanks to the launch of Halo Infinite, Xbox Series breaks Xbox hardware records"

Like either way, I don't think they're ordering the same amount of consoles for Summer period as they would be for Holiday.