Xbox One will be unveiled by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) on November 22 in thirteen geographies including Europe and the United States, according to a report from Benchmark analyst Mike Hickey. Thirteen countries where this console will be released are Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the U.K., and U.S.A.. Elsewhere the console will be launched in 2014.
“We are humbled and gratified by the tremendous interest in Xbox One from game fans everywhere,” said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate VP of marketing, strategy and business for Xbox.
Plants Vs Zombies, to be available on Xbox One
Game developer Electronic Arts is developing cooperative and competitive modes for its soon to be launched Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare Shooter inspired by developer PopCap’s popular tower-defense Games. The game will be launched on consoles for Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC in 2014.
Garden Warfare will be equipped with four player cooperative mode where players will play in a group to conquer enemy zombies, and a 24 player team based competitive mode. Pricing of the game for Xbox One will be kept at $40 and $30 for Xbox 360 and PC.
PopCap has newly launched Plants Vs Zombies 2, which is a free game available on iOS platform only at present. In the game, a player can get special plants for some credit along with a host of other features. The game has already enjoyed about 25 million downloads.
Microsoft closing in on day and date digital release gap
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) will soon close the day and date gap between digital and physical availability of the games. The company earlier raised the issue of a three month gap between physical and digital release. Payday 2 was available on Xbox Live Arcade just a week after it was launched at retail. Other gaming consoles like Wii and PS3 are already providing physical and digital simultaneously.
Xbox One already in mass production
Marketing chief Yusef Mehdi said that Xbox one has now gone into mass production and the company is looking forward to shipping millions of consoles this holiday season. Pre-orders are full, but the company will make one last change—increasing the CPU’s clockspeed from 1.6 GHz to 1.75 GHz. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has never revealed the original speed of the AMD built processor, and it is not easy to determine how important the 150 MHz increase might be.
