Xbox One Release Date is November 22nd

November 22nd, that is the day that people who have pre-ordered the Xbox One will be able to get their hands on that new piece of shiny, shiny kit.

Initial launch markets for the console include Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and Spain.

Other countries will see the console release at some time in 2014.

Here’s the official statement, from Yusuf Mehdi:

This is a big week for Xbox One! I am pleased to share a few exciting developments as we continue our journey to deliver the best Xbox ever.

First, we hit an important milestone as we began full production of the Xbox One console recently. The culmination of many years of listening to you, our fans, developing innovative technology, and partnering with the best game and entertainment partners in the industry has brought us to this point. There is still a lot more work to do, but the teams are making excellent progress and are focused on launch.

Speaking of launch, we’re now in a position to share that Xbox One will be available on Nov. 22, 2013 in all 13 of our initial launch markets – Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and USA. Many more markets will follow in 2014.

We are humbled and gratified by the tremendous interest in Xbox One from game fans everywhere. We sold out of our pre-order supply faster than at any other time in our history and we are on path to have the biggest launch of an Xbox ever. We look forward to celebrating with millions and millions of gamers this holiday.

As a result of this incredible consumer demand and the development progress on Xbox One, I am thrilled to share that today we are making available a limited number of additional Xbox One Day One consoles for pre-order. We have coordinated with our retail partners to make it easy for you to reserve your Xbox One today.

Finally, in the spirit of continuing to bring new value and excitement to Xbox, I am also pleased to confirm that the development team has increased the CPU from 1.6GHZ to 1.75GHZ, roughly a 10 percent increase in CPU performance. This is on top of the 6% increase we previously announced for the GPU. What does this mean to you the gamer? It means that the Xbox One will have that much more power for developers to make their games and entertainment really shine. We’re going to keep bringing more value to the Xbox One as we head towards launch building on some of the advancements we have already shared such as the 40 plus improvements to the Xbox One controller, advancements to help you find the perfect opponent and make the most of our online community, to the power of the cloud.

And I have to mention the games – Xbox One is proving to be the best place for games, with our exclusive games winning over 100 awards at E3, driving pre-order increases of 200% in European markets after gamers first played our blockbuster line-up at gamescom, and blowing away thousands of fans at PAX PRIME this week-end. Only on Xbox One will you find exclusive blockbusters like “Halo,” “Dead Rising 3,” “Ryse: Son of Rome” and “Forza Motorsport 5”; new digital content from titles like coming “Call of Duty: Ghosts” and “Battlefield 4” coming to Xbox One first; and the “FIFA 14” Ultimate Team experience you won’t find anywhere else.

November 22 is a special day in Xbox history – on this day, we first launched Xbox 360 in 2005.* Our next chapter begins in 79 days, when Xbox One becomes available. We built Xbox One to bring you the best games, unrivaled multiplayer and more entertainment than ever before. It’s nearly time to say “Xbox On” and open a new world of games and entertainment.