Gamers all over the world are celebrating as Microsoft's Xbox One officially hit stores worldwide, including the U.S. The third game console from Microsoft after the 2001 release of the original Xbox, had fans in the United Kingdom, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the United States falling in line outside stores to get hold of the $499 console.
With the arrival of Xbox One, the game console war officially begins with Sony's PlayStation 4 a step ahead as it arrived in living rooms almost a week ago.
The Xbox One first landed in Australia and New Zealand midnight of Friday local time. In Auckland, the maker of Xbox threw a party at Shed 10 attended by gamers who pre-ordered the newest console. Meanwhile in Sydney, it was like New Year's celebration as famous landmarks such as the Sydney Tower, Luna Park, and the harbor near the Sydney Harbour Bridge turned green with Xbox One 3-D projections and countdown clocks.
In the United Kingdom, the Xbox One also has fans on queue outside 100 branches of Tesco and 300 other game shops. Microsoft's game is more expensive than that of Sony's PS4 with the former sporting a tag price of £429 ($694) while the latter goes for £349 ($565).
"With Sony's PlayStation 4 being such a similar device and £80 cheaper, Microsoft will face significant challenges convincing shoppers that Xbox One is the smarter investment," said Rob Crossley of the tech blog ComputerAndVideoGames.
"If history has anything to say about it, core gamers tend to favour Sony. There is nothing I've seen to say that one platform is going to have an advantage over the other," said Gartner research director Brian Blau.
In the United States, the Xbox One has been released Friday midnight local time. Stores like Gamestop, Walmart, and Best Buy had earlier released rules for those who want to grab the Day One edition game console.
According to reports, Gamestop started transactions at 6 p.m. with final transactions accepted until midnight. The store had instructed its staff to organize the line before midnight so the consoles can be claimed in an orderly fashion.
Best Buy, on the other hand, processed pre-orders at 10 p.m. and it will be a first-come first-serve basis. Consoles will be released after midnight but Best Buy disclosed that their supplies are limited. It also limited the sale to one console per person.
Walmart accepts pre-orders and promised delivery of the units before Christmas.
The Xbox One comes with an eight-core processor and equipped with 8GB of RAM. It also has a sizeable 500GB of hard drive space for all the games, apps, music, among other files users might want to store. The device can also be connected to the cable or satellite box and comes with an easy to use home-entertainment interface, a feature that helps the Xbox One to conquer living rooms.
"The strategy is really to do two things: to build a best-in-class device for gaming (and) the first really all-in-one entertainment system," said senior vice president for interactive entertainment of Microsoft Yusuf Mehdi in an interview.
For its initial release, there are 22 games available for the Xbox One.
