PS5 release date: Xbox promises to announce 'exact time' of pre-orders amid PlayStation chaos
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Microsoft has promised it will soon reveal the “exact time” that Xbox pre-orders will go live, amid chaos as people try to buy the PlayStation 5.
The company posted a tweet, soon after PlayStation’s reveal event, in which it assured customers: “don’t worry - we’ll let you know the exact time pre-orders start for you soon”.
It did not explicitly reference Sony, but appeared to be a response to the confusion around the opening of pre-orders for the PlayStation 5.
Sony had said after the event that pre-orders would begin the following day, on Thursday morning. But a number of retailers appeared to go early, offering the console to buy on Wednesday night.
That crashed many of those retailers websites, and meant that the consoles immediately sold out. Players complained that they had not had a proper chance to try and pre-order, given there was so little notice before retailers started offering the console and so little information about when exactly that would happen.
Despite Sony opening pre-orders long before Xbox – which will do so at some point on 22 September – the PlayStation 5 will actually arrive more than a week later than the new Xbox in some countries, including the UK.
The PS5 will arrive on 12 November in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. It will arrive in the rest of the world a week later, on 19 November.
Microsoft will release both versions of its next-generation consoles – the Xbox Series X and Series S – everywhere on 10 November.
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