As we had all suspected earlier today, Microsoft has officially (and finally) announced that its next generation Xbox One console will be released on November 22nd of this year and that the console will be landing simultaneously in the US and Europe on that same date.
Sony had already announced its release day information a few weeks ago at the Gamescom event in Cologne, where the company revealed that the PlayStation 4 would be released on November 15th in the US and November 29th in the UK and Europe.
What this means is that fans in the US will only have to wait a week longer to get an Xbox One compared to the PS4 and that European gamers can get their hands on a One a full week ahead of the PS4.
November 22nd is a date synonymous with Microsoft as the company released the original Xbox 360 on this exact date 8 years earlier, so the choice is a very apt one and leaves us wondering how we didn’t think of it before.
Gamers keen to play with the new Microsoft machine will be able to do so from November 22nd, 8 years after the US release to the day of the Xbox 360 in 2005. The console will be launched in all of its 13 launch countries on that date so gamers across the globe will be able to receive and set up the console together.
In the UK the console will retail for £429.99 and gamers who pre-order the “Day One Edition” of the Xbox One will also get a free copy of FIFA 14 to download to the console. A special edition Call of Duty: Ghosts pack is also available and all console packages will include the Xbox One console, a controller, Kinect (2.0) sensor system and a stereo gaming headset.
What’s more, Microsoft has also been tweaking the console before its release and via Yusuf Mehdi, Xbox’s chief marketing officer, the company has confirmed that the Xbox One is now in ‘full production’ with a last-minute CPU boost from 1.6GHz to 1.75GHz.
The Xbox One will be released in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the UK and the USA on November 22nd.