Aaaand it’s official. The Xbox Series X will be releasing on November 10 with an estimated retail price of $499, roughly around PHP25,000. “That’s the tweet”.

Following a barrage of leaks that turned into official announcements, Microsoft have unveiled their biggest and most important announcement yet. As they go on the “offensive”, no more playing cat & mouse, they’ve finally taken the lid off of the most powerful next generation console and have given it an official price tag that, to be honest, is very enticing.

According to the official Series X website, pre-orders will go live on September 22 with an Xbox All-Access financing option in participating countries.

Both the Xbox Series X and Series S will be launching on November 10 and with Game Pass along with Project xCloud right behind it, Microsoft is entering the next generation with guns blazing.

No word yet on local availability, but given that the Xbox One has been available locally, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see this hit shores later this year.

Ahead of the Series X launch in November, Microsoft has given everyone a sneak peek on the new and improved dashboard which looks mostly similar but will feature major improvements in ease of use and load speed.

As announced by Microsoft, the update will launch this Holiday and will feature a uniform design across Xbox mobile apps, Xbox Game Pass, and the Xbox family of consoles, which is designed to feel familiar and seamless whichever device you choose to play on.

Arguably one of the biggest improvements of the new dashboard will be how fast it works, boasting of 50% faster load time when you boot up your Xbox and 30% faster load time when returning from a game, all while using 40% less memory. All this talk of percentages and numbers all equate to the players spending more time actually playing the game instead of waiting for the next thing to load.

Microsoft has also confirmed that an Xbox Mobile App is in development, allowing mobile users to connect to their network of friends as well as the capability to share content from your console straight to social media.

This is but one of the many things already revealed by Microsoft to get users to try out the Series X when it launches later this year. While there are many things we already know about the next generation offering from Microsoft, we’re looking forward to a couple more which could actually be the most important ones – an official Series S announcement and retail price.

3 months to go, give it to us already, Microsoft!

Over the past few days, the next gen Xbox leaks have been seeing the light of day in the form of leaked controllers, suggesting that a cheaper and ‘weaker’ Xbox Series S could be on the table for Microsoft. If this next leak proves to be accurate, we’ll be marking early November as the possible launch of the Xbox Series X, particularly November 6.

Tom Warren, Senior Editor from The Verge, has obtained evidence of sealed boxes allegedly containing Xbox Controllers with a “do not sell or display before” warning of November 6. Microsoft just announced the release window for their next generation offering, so this leak may have some semblance of accuracy.

Interestingly, as per The Verge, some people have somehow purchased the said controllers and have even registered them on the Microsoft Support site, revealing a warranty expiration of November 5, 2021, suggesting that these controllers are indeed legit and working on the one year warranty afforded to Xbox consoles.

While nothing official has been announced by Microsoft, the Halo delay has surely dampened the strong launch momentum that the Series X has been building up to and by possibly launching early, they can use the headstart to get a lead on the next-gen counterpart from Sony.

As always, we’ll be waiting on Microsoft to make their official announcements.

From Holiday 2020 to November 2020. Microsoft has laid down one of the final pieces of its puzzle for their next generation console and with it, a peek as to what players can expect when it launches.

An announcement from Microsoft narrows down the Xbox Series X launch window to November 2020 but along with it, the promise of “Thousands of Games Spanning Four Generations”, technically making it one of the biggest (if not the biggest) launch lineup in recent memory.

Specifics can be seen below:

• More than 50 new games planned for this year across generations and optimized for Xbox Series X, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, Gears Tactics, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Watch Dogs: Legion. With Smart Delivery you only have to buy these games once to play the best versions for your console, across generations.
• New games developed exclusively for Xbox Series X and launching with Xbox Game Pass, including The Medium, Scorn, Tetris Effect Connected and more.
• More than 40 popular games newly optimized to take full advantage of Xbox Series X such as Destiny 2, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Madden NFL 21 and more.

Of course, with it, Game Pass Ultimate will be getting a boost because of Project xCloud, which is set to release this September.

With Halo Infinite being out of the launch lineup for the Series X, it just lost one of its biggest come-on’s for the system, making it much more apparent that you don’t need to upgrade to a Series X just yet, as is the strategy for Microsoft with their cross-generation and pro-consumer approach. Instead, Microsoft will be banking on its other titles, backwards compatibility across previous generations, and Game Pass, which is a hell of a deal on its own.

Now all we need is a price.