Microsoft’s VP of Xbox marketing, strategy and business, Yusuf Mehdi said today that the Xbox One will launch on the 22nd of November in 13 markets.
Ireland is one of the thirteen, thankfully – the others are North America, UK, Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and Spain.
The launch date puts the Xbox One on the shelves before the PlayStation 4 in Europe – the PS4 launches on the 29th of November here but Sony will be a week ahead of Microsoft in the States with a launch date there of November 15th.
November 22 is a special day in Xbox history – on this day, we first launched Xbox 360 in 2005. Our next chapter begins in 79 days, when Xbox One becomes available
The best part of the press release comes at the end though:
It’s nearly time to say “Xbox On” and open a new world of games and entertainment.
-except here in Ireland, where voice commands wont work at launch…
All pre orders on Xbox One Day One Editions in Europe will come with a free digital copy of FIFA 14.
The full press release is below.
Xbox One to Launch on November 22, 2013 in 13 Markets
By Yusuf Mehdi, Vice President of Marketing, Strategy and Business, Xbox
This is a big week for Xbox One! I am pleased to share a few exciting developments as we continue our journey to deliver the best Xbox ever.
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.
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 percent 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 week-end. 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 2005.* Our next chapter begins in 79 days, when Xbox One becomes available. We built Xbox One to bring you the best games, unrivaled multiplayer and more entertainment than ever before. It’s nearly time to say “Xbox On” and open a new world of games and entertainment.
