When the Xbox One launches in November, it won't be exactly what was promised back in May. And that's definitely a good thing.
In addition to the obvious changes, Microsoft has upgraded the console's specs, including a CPU boost that was announced just yesterday.
Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of marketing and strategy for Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, told the audience at the Citi Global Technology Conference that the Xbox One's CPU has been boosted to 1.75GHz.
That's a roughly 10 percent increase over the previous 1.6GHz.
Xbox One vs PS4, of course
Microsoft previously announced a graphics boost for the Xbox One when the console's GPU was officially overclocked from 800MHz to 853MHz last month.
At the time Microsoft's Xbox Live vice president Marc Whitten said the Xbox One's graphics are "100 per cent optimised."
"The system is really going to shine [and] the games look pretty incredible," Mehdi said at the Citi conference.
The Xbox One and PS4 are still essentially neck-and-neck in terms of power - recall that they both pack AMD's Jaguar processor, and while the PS4 supposedly has slightly beefier hardware specs Microsoft plans to use its cloud services to make up for it.
If anything that will make the war between Microsoft and Sony even more intense this generation, as the true battles will be fought over services, features and games rather than raw power.
Pre-ordered out
Mehdi also noted that the the Xbox One is in "full production" as Microsoft confirmed today that the Xbox One release date for Australia will be November 22, making Australia one of the first countries to get the console.
Microsoft Australia said that pre-orders for the Xbox One has been unprecedented as the Xbox One Day One Edition Console is already sold out in Australia.
But for everyone who pre-orders the console, Microsoft Australia announced today that it will be throwing in FIFA 14 for free.
"Australians love their sport and their sports games, and our Xbox One FIFA 14 bundle in particular is our gift to those Xbox fans who pre-order early," said Jeremy Hinton, Interactive Entertainment Business Lead for Microsoft Australia.
"Also, to make sure people who pre-ordered the Day One Edition Console don't lose out, we'll be making sure they all receive a copy of FIFA 14 too."
Via Polygon
