A few lucky Xbox fans received quite the treat this week, finding their Xbox One pre-orders had shown up weeks ahead of the new console’s official Nov. 22 launch. According to numerous reports, the early deliveries came through Target—an obvious miscalculation somewhere in shipping and receiving. One of the consoles has already gone up on eBay for a Buy It Now price of $10,000, but it was swiftly taken down after gaining widespread attention.
Twitter user Moonlightswami, who also got his Xbox One early, saw fit to be much more productive with the console’s early arrival, going through a number of features and sharing his findings. As many feared, there’s a required 500MB update that users need to download before games can even be played.
As expected, Moonlightswami’s console has already been banned from Xbox Live for his troubles, though Microsoft’s Major Nelson has reached out in an effort to clear this mess up. Before any of that, however, Moonlight found that listings for games in the Marketplace include titles like NBA 2K14, Madden and FIFA. Others like Dead Rising 3 and Call of Duty: Ghosts are also available—each game’s size ranges from as low as 8GB up to 43GB. Moonlight was able to confirm that games can be played while they’re installing, but only once they’ve surpassed the 50 percent mark.
Other findings include a neat “featured challenges” section, some interface changes, and Moonlight’s opinion on the Xbox One’s Game DVR feature, which he said is just ok. We’re in the home stretch now heading into the next generation of gaming; the PlayStation 4 is launching on Nov. 15, which is just days away, but it appears the Xbox One has technically come out first. Asked whether he’d ban users who received their console early, Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida said, “No.”
