Xbox One won’t work in more than half of the world

Living in Poland or Portugal and looking forward to buying the Xbox One in October? You’ll be disappointed to hear that the Xbox One won’t work in your country, or at least not at launch. The Xbox One Pre-order page was updated today to include a list of conditions (read restrictions) set in place for the Xbox One. Most of these restrictions we are already familiar with such as used games, broadband requirements, etc, however there is one new restriction that until now was kept from the public. Region restrictions. Yes you read that right. The Xbox One won’t even work in certain countries at launch due to Xbox Live (now a requirement for the console to work) not being available in certain geographical regions.

Still confused? The Xbox One needs to connect at least once every 24 hours to Xbox Live to work. Not just for online games but for offline games too. However Xbox Live for the Xbox One won’t be available in most countries at the time of launch which means more than half of the world won’t be able to play the console until Xbox Live comes to their region.

Could this be the final nail in the coffin for Xbox One? Probably. It’s one thing to insist gamers play online, it’s yet another thing to restrict gamers from swapping/trading their games but to downright block more than half of the world from even buying the console is industrial suicide.