next generation console Xbox One On release

The starting gun on the next generation console race hasn't fired – with apologies to Wii U – and yet with a scant few months to go Microsoft finds itself playing catch-up. The Xbox One, successor to the much-loved
Xbox 360, had a disastrous E3 showing that was followed by a series of reverse ferrets. So many in fact that, excepting the machine's dimensions, Xbox One now bears very little relation to the Xbox One revealed a few months ago.

Microsoft says that Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland will be receiving the console “as soon as possible” in 2013.
Notably absent from either list is Japan, a historically weak market for the Xbox since its first iteration, as well as the home country of Playstation manufacturer Sony SNE +1.21%. While I think Microsoft is wise to de-prioritize Asia — that’s a battle that may not be won until China comes online — the loss of a range of European countries must smart. Xbox is weaker in Europe than America, but that’s not written in stone. A new generation could be a moment to regain some ground, but staggering the launch isn’t going to help anything.

The forthcoming Xbox One got a bit of a kicking when it was first announced, landing itself in hot water with unpopular features including a mandated 24-hour online check-in and restrictions on the used games market.
However, in light of the reaction from disgruntled gamers, these features have been scrapped, pulling the Xbox One out of its initial positivity drought.
And so the re-specc'd Xbox One console will go on sale in November this year and has a price of $US499/£429/AUD$599.
Microsoft describes the Xbox One as "the ultimate all in one entertainment system - one system for a new generation." It has the second generation of Kinect baked in nice and deep and has powerful specs similar to those of the Sony PS4.

• First look: Xbox One review

The black console wants to be the one-stop entertainment solution for your living room, integrating live TV, games, movies and web services like Skype, all controlled using Kinect's improved voice recognition features.

Xbox One release date

The official Xbox One release date is November 2013 for the US and UK and 19 other territories, slap bang at the start of the Christmas silly season.
Toys R Us in the UK leaked some release dates onto its website at the end of July, though, hinting that the Xbox One release date will be Friday November 29 - two weeks before the December 13 PS4 release date mooted by the same site. These remain unconfirmed release dates.

Full Xbox One specifications

• CPU: low power x86-64 AMD "Jaguar", 8 cores, APU
• GPU: AMD Radeon APU, 1.23TFLOPS
• Memory: 8GB DDR3 (5GB available to games)
• Storage: 500GB HDD
• Optical Drive (Read only): Blu-ray
• I/O: 3x USB 3.0 ports
• Communication: Ethernet, IEEE 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth® 2.1 (EDR)
• Output: HDMI, Optical audio