Sony PlayStation 4 will launch on Nov. 15 in the US
But we still don't have a launch date for the Microsoft Xbox One, the PlayStation 4's chief competitor.
A visitor plays a Playstation 4 at the Sony exhibition stand during Gamescom 2013 in Cologne August 21, 2013.
Reuters
The PlayStation 4 will launch on Nov. 15 in the US and Canada, Sony has announced.
The date will ensure that Sony's next-gen console takes full advantage of peak holiday shopping season, which gets underway on Black Friday, Nov. 29.
In a press release, Sony said that ten Latin American countries – full list here – and most European countries would get the PS4 the last weekend in November. The console will sell for $399 in the US, significantly undercutting the Microsoft Xbox One on price, and debut with a list of launch games that includes big-budget titles such as Call of Duty: Ghosts, Madden 25, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, and Battlefield 4.
Like the Nintendo Wii U, the PlayStation 4 belongs to the so-called "eighth generation" of consoles. The Wii U, of course, has been selling dismally – between April and June of 2013, Nintendo unloaded just 160,000 Wii U globally. (Nintendo sold 210,000 units of its aging and underpowered Wii console during the same period, demonstrating exactly how lackluster the demand has been for the Japanese company's newest product.)
Sony and Microsoft are hoping to make a bit more of a splash.
The big question now is when, exactly, Microsoft will launch the Xbox One. Thus far, the company has only identified a month: November. So will it try to get out ahead of the PlayStation 4? Probably not, argues Stephen Totilo of Kotaku, who made a compelling case yesterday for an Xbox One release window of somewhere between Nov. 19 and Nov. 29.