Xbox Series X Pre-Order Guide: Options, Release date, Confirmed Specs, Price & more

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Xbox Series X was officially unveiled as Microsoft's next-gen console back in December 2019, and the official release date given was 'Holiday 2020'

Well, with all of the intense disruption that the Coronavirus outbreak is causing on the gaming industry, a 2021 release date is starting to look increasingly likely.

Continue below to see your present pre-order options.

Xbox 2020 release date

Gamers were expecting to see the Xbox Series X console launch sometime between October and December 2020, in the ‘holiday’ window of 2020.

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TEASE: Under its former guise 'Project Scarlett' the new Xbox is set to arrive in November next year

However, it's starting to look like that this release window is less concrete than it initially seemed.

Confirmed Specs

Xbox Series X will be Microsoft's most powerful console ever. Powered by their custom-designed processor leveraging AMD’s latest Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures.

xbox series x specs 12 teraflops rate shading raytracing
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POWER: Sony will have a tough time competing with that

Delivering four times the processing power of an Xbox One and enabling developers to leverage 12 TFLOPS of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) performance – twice that of an Xbox One X and more than eight times the original Xbox One.

Their patented form of variable rate shading (VRS) empowers developers to more efficiently utilize the full power of the Xbox Series X. Rather than spending GPU cycles uniformly to every single pixel on the screen, they can prioritize individual effects on specific game characters or important environmental objects.

You can expect more dynamic and realistic environments powered by hardware-accelerated DirectX Raytracing – a first for console gaming. This means true-to-life lighting, accurate reflections and realistic acoustics in real-time as you explore the game world.

A lot can change in a few years

The Xbox One is a very, very different console to what Microsoft intended it to be.

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RIP: The Kinect is no more, making room for a more genuine gaming experience

Gone is the Kinect, one of the system’s signature features, making way for more power to become a games console proper, rather than a 'family entertainment system' it was originally intended to be.

READ MORE: Absolutely everything we know about Xbox's new console

The result was what many people saw as an underpowered piece of kit - ultimately resulting in the Xbox One X, a supercharged version of the console using a very different technical architecture, which rocketed the Xbox into 4K territory (along with PS4 Pro).

What's clear from Xbox Series X is that Microsoft knows exactly what this is. The tower structure nods to gaming PC - and the performance will be some two times faster than the Xbox One X.