Xbox One Launching 22nd of November (Forza 5 or Fifa 14 Free with preorders)

[EvilBoris]

http://news.xbox.com/2013/09/xbox-one-launch

First, we hit an important milestone as we began full production of the Xbox One console recently. The culmination of many years of listening to you, our fans, developing innovative technology, and partnering with the best game and entertainment partners in the industry has brought us to this point. There is still a lot more work to do, but the teams are making excellent progress and are focused on launch.

Speaking of launch, we're now in a position to share that Xbox One will be available on November 22, 2013 in all 13 of our initial launch markets - Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and USA. Many more markets will follow in 2014.

We are humbled and gratified by the tremendous interest in Xbox One from game fans everywhere. We sold out of our pre-order supply faster than at any other time in our history and we are on path to have the biggest launch of an Xbox ever. We look forward to celebrating with millions and millions of gamers this holiday.

As a result of this incredible consumer demand and the development progress on Xbox One, I am thrilled to share that today we are making available a limited number of additional Xbox One Day One consoles for pre-order. We have coordinated with our retail partners to make it easy for you to reserve your Xbox One today.

Finally, in the spirit of continuing to bring new value and excitement to Xbox, I am also pleased to confirm that the development team has increased the CPU from 1.6GHz to 1.75GHz, roughly a 10% increase in CPU performance. This is on top of the 6% increase we previously announced for the GPU. What does this mean to you the gamer? It means that the Xbox One will have that much more power for developers to make their games and entertainment really shine. We're going to keep bringing more value to the Xbox One as we head towards launch building on some of the advancements we have already shared such as the 40-plus improvements to the Xbox One controller, advancements to help you find the perfect opponent and make the most of our online community, to the power of the cloud.

And I have to mention the games - Xbox One is proving to be the best place for games, with our exclusive games winning over 100 awards at E3, driving pre-order increases of 200% in European markets after gamers first played our blockbuster line-up at gamescom, and blowing away thousands of fans at PAX Prime this weekend. Only on Xbox One will you find exclusive blockbusters like Halo, Dead Rising 3, Ryse: Son of Rome and Forza Motorsport 5; new digital content from titles like coming Call of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 coming to Xbox One first; and the FIFA 14 Ultimate Team experience you won't find anywhere else.

November 22 is a special day in Xbox history - on this day, we first launched Xbox 360 [in the US] in 2005. Our next chapter begins in 79 days, when Xbox One becomes available. We built Xbox One to bring you the best games, unrivalled multiplayer and more entertainment than ever before. It's nearly time to say “Xbox On” and open a new world of games and entertainment.

23 games have been confirmed for release on day one. They are:

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
Battlefield 4
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Crimson Dragon
Dead Rising 3
FIFA 14
Fighter Within
Forza Motorsport 5
Just Dance 2014
Killer Instinct
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
Lococycle
Madden NFL 25
NBA 2K14
NBA LIVE 14
Need for Speed: Rivals
Peggle 2
Powerstar Golf
Ryse: Son of Rome
Skylanders: Swap Force
Watch Dogs
Zoo Tycoon
Zumba Fitness: World Party

[teddymeow]

Is it me or is that woman a bit "too" excited!?

[EvilBoris]

She's American. Also, she's drank 3 cans of Mountain Dew prior to the interview

[gambit6613]

Finally we now know the date, got to say I'm now starting to get quite excited even though it seems an age away. I'm split 60/40 in favour of Xbone at the moment, cannot wait for DR3 and Forza 5. I have counted 10 of the launch games I'm going for.

[arcnas]

AS much as i like the ps4 , Xbox one has the launch games i want in Forza an dead rising 3 , so im going with it this side of christmas, having said that i wish both were launching a little earlier its to close to christmas, is one was in October id get both.

[yesteryeargames]

Dam that's a grand in a week for both consoles and a few games . Better start saving :S

[Lebowski]

23 games but there all a bit meh, never got on with forza, fifa can suck my balls, as can another new assassins creed game havent finished 3 yet, dead rising has shat on its herritage and gone gritty gritty bang bang, american sports titles no, zumba no, Lego no, COD no, so i suppose i will get Peggle two then.

Watch dogs and Battlefield are what I'm most looking forward too in that line up, so i guess i should get a ps4, will i be able to wait a week though as "teh xborx one" is out first in the UK, garrrr must resist shiny shiny new things.

[charlesr]

Posted in bargains too but best option for xbone with bf4?.... I dont care about fifa.

[EvilBoris]

They've just announced you now have the choice of Forza or Fifa

I wasn't fussed about Fifa, but it was free. Actually quite pleased I can now get a game I was actually going to buy

[charlesr]

Oh man... Forza for free. That's great. No interest in fifa but looking forward to Forza. Still think they should just make it 40 cheaper and let us choose.

[jim g]

Is it me or is that woman a bit "too" excited!?

She is annoying as hell and you barely understand her!

[EvilBoris]

Oh man... Forza for free. That's great. No interest in fifa but looking forward to Forza. Still think they should just make it 40 cheaper and let us choose.

I guess the issue there is that retailers would make less margin and Microsoft probably don't pay close to ?40 for each of those games

[wakka]

Oh man... Forza for free. That's great. No interest in fifa but looking forward to Forza. Still think they should just make it 40 cheaper and let us choose.

Dropping the RRP would have much bigger consequences than giving away some digital copies of games though. There's the PR angle for one thing - they don't want to look like they initially overpriced it, or were trying to rip people off. Then there's the fact that they can't increase it again, so they're stuck with that reduced price for years to come, which will either eat their entire margin or increase their losses per unit significantly (I don't know whether they're losing or making money on these new systems from a manufacturing perspective, obviously the R&D cost has been prodigious).

[Rider_on_the_Storm]

Looking through those games MS don't have a single exclusive i'd like to play. Same could be said for the PS4 line up.

[Guts]

Looking through those games MS don't have a single exclusive i'd like to play. Same could be said for the PS4 line up.

Ditto. I'd rather buy a Wii U than either of those expensive dust collectors. GTA V on the 360 and 3DS will keep me happy easily to the end of the year.