Skip to main content

Microsoft’s Xbox Series X won’t release this Thanksgiving

For a moment, it seemed like Christmas was going to arrive a month early for gaming fans when Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Halo Infinite were announced for a Thanksgiving launch. It would have been an unprecedented move that potentially could have thrown Black Friday into chaos.

However, it appears the announcement was an error. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X website briefly claimed a Thanksgiving 2020 release date, but quickly changed back to Holiday 2020. Geoff Keighley, best known as host and organizer of The Game Awards, brought this to gamers’ attention.

Related Videos

For now, it appears the release date remains unknown.

UPDATE: Sources tell me the Xbox Series X release date is unchanged and still "Holiday 2020." There is no announcement today about a release date.

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) March 18, 2020

The Xbox Series X was first announced during E3 2019, and its final design was unveiled during The Game Awards in late 2019. It’s shaping up to be one of the most powerful game consoles ever created, with comparable specifications to the PlayStation 5 and the potential to surpass Sony’s GPU in terms of raw power.

Xbox Series X - World Premier - 4K trailer

The Xbox Series X began development in 2016 before the Xbox One X had launched. It was created with particular attention to developers’ and players’ feedback and aimed at pushing technical boundaries past expectations. It was also created to work seamlessly with the new Project xCloud streaming service, with certain games being cloud-native, meaning they will never rely solely on the console’s own hardware.

“It’s really about making sure players all across the world can have these same great gaming experiences,” Jason Ronald. partner director of program management for Xbox, said during Game Stack Live.

A feature called “stream awareness” allows games to recognize what device they are played on, allowing for more detailed user-interface details on an Xbox Series X compared to a mobile device. The console’s “dynamic latency input” also comes into play, with games recognizing actions coming from a controller versus a touchscreen and adjusting accordingly.

Xbox Series X will be backward-compatible with games on all previous Xbox consoles. Through its Smart Delivery program, players won’t have to buy some titles more than once to get the Series X version if they already purchased an Xbox One version. This includes Cyberpunk 2077, which will launch on Xbox One, PS4, Stadia, and PC just before the Xbox Series X arrives.

This is breaking news. This story will be updated as more information is available.

Editors' Recommendations

Final Fantasy 16: release date, trailers, gameplay, and more
Shiva in Final Fantasy 16.

Final Fantasy 16 is finally on its way after a prolonged gap from the previous numbered entry. While numerous major titles have seen delays in the past couple of years, we're glad to finally know the game is nearly upon us. There are still plenty of mysteries about the new adventure, but here's everything we know so far.

Further reading

Read more
All cross-platform games (PS5, Xbox Series X, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC)
Two squads of heroes clash in an Overwatch 2 trailer.

Cross-platform support is becoming more important in the world of video games. Multiplayer hits like Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 and Fortnite have pushed crossplay into the limelight, and now most AAA multiplayer games release with at least partial cross-platform support. Finding every cross-platform game is no easy feat, though, so we did the hard work to bring you a comprehensive list of games that support crossplay.

Unfortunately, there aren't any rules when it comes to crossplay, so each game handles the feature a little differently. To make matters more confusing, certain backward-compatible games on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X still support crossplay on the most recent hardware, even if there isn't an official release for that hardware.

Read more
The Finals is the shake-up the competitive first-person shooter scene needs
A player stands up against a wall in a The Finals screenshot.

While I enjoy playing first-person shooters occasionally, it's a genre I've struggled to become a hardcore fan of. To me, it has stagnated, with recent Call of Duty and Battlefield games feeling like little more than rehashes of the same quick-kill-focused gameplay on maps that all blend together after a while. That's why The Finals' longer time-to-kill, unique match objectives, and focus on level destruction all feel like a breath of fresh air.
THE FINALS Closed Beta Trailer
Developed by Embark Studios, the new multiplayer shooter is a notable change of pace for a stagnating genre. Because it takes a lot of effort to defeat an opponent, and the map is continuously changing as you do so, no two matches feel quite the same. I can attest to that, as I recently went hands-on with it and had that exact experience. Lots of thrilling, emergent moments organically happened during each match, leading to some of the most memorable matches I've had playing a first-person shooter in years.
If you've always enjoyed destructible environments in your FPS games and enjoy inventive competitive shooters that aren't just trying to chase what is popular, then you'll want to check out The Finals.
Map mayhem
The Finals' primary mode, Extraction, is framed as a game show where four teams compete to earn the most money during a match. Players do this by locating vaults on a map, obtaining cash boxes, and delivering them to a cash-out station. Extra money is rewarded for kills and a team's total is halved if they are completely wiped. The basics of the FPS gameplay are approachable enough for anyone who has played a game in this genre before. That said, its longer time-to-kill also helps that mission and gives players time to appreciate just how reactive its world is.
In the Closed Beta preview build, I played on two maps based on Monaco and Seoul. Each contains points of interest connected by some indoor arenas and long outdoor corridors that you'd come to expect from an FPS map. But it only stays that way for a short time. As soon as explosives get involved, the map transforms as buildings crumble and the environment reacts to the players. It stays that way too, as developer Embark Studios' server-side technology tracks and accommodates any changes to the map.
Last year, the developers at Embark Studios told Digital Trends that they hope this technology would make other developers panic. While we don't think The Finals will go that far, it certainly handles destruction better than other games that have tried to boast similar strengths, like Crackdown 3 or Battlefield 2042. It's not only a neat technical feat, but it also opens up many organic situations you don't get in other FPS games.

For example, a building was crumbling as I retrieved a cash box and headed to a cash-out station. I was under fire, and an opponent's rocket completely destroyed the pathway to get me to the building my teammates were in. I knew I didn't want the team chasing me to get ahold of the cash box, so I sacrificed myself by throwing the vault across that gap to my teammate before proceeding to hold enemies off as they delivered it to a station.
Even the greenery reacts to the player, especially when they have a flamethrower or flame grenade. At one moment, the station my team was delivering to was out in the open in a park. Other teams were coming at us from all angles, so I threw several fire grenades, and my teammate used a flamethrower. Doing this, we set most of the park aflame, forcing our opponents into pathways where we could pick them off more easily. Floors can crumble beneath you, staircases that get you to objectives can be destroyed, and a lot of map mayhem helps define each match of The Finals.
Leaving your mark
The Finals' destruction creates some compelling dynamics, making the player feel like they are shaping the world that each match takes place in. Players can customize their characters with outfits and special loadouts ahead of matches, and some of these options allow them to set down jump pads and ziplines or use a grappling hook to improve mobility. Turrets, barriers, and mines are also equippable, which can be used to direct the flow of battle and herd opponents into certain sections of the map. One particularly memorable moment saw my team calling two elevators in Seoul, only to find that another team had put a turret in one and all of themselves in another.

Read more