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Best Buy plans PS4, and now Xbox One, midnight launch sales

Retailer says it will offer both next-gen game consoles for sale just after midnight on their release days. This is in addition to online sales.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn
On November 21, 2005, Norm Edwards became the first-ever person to buy an Xbox 360. Daniel Terdiman/CNET

For those eager to get their grubby mitts on Sony or Microsoft's newest, next-gen consoles the very second they're available, Best Buy is opening a little earlier than usual.

The retailer on Wednesday announced plans to run a midnight release event for Microsoft's Xbox One console, which earlier today got a November 22 release date. That sale joins another, announced late last month, for Sony's PlayStation 4, which goes on sale November 15.

It's not unusual for Best Buy to run a midnight sale for big game releases, though major, next-generation console runs happen less often. The Xbox One, for instance, is the successor to the Xbox 360, which first hit stores back in November 2005. Best Buy actually brought a truck out to Microsoft's 30-hour long desert launch event then, so the 2,000 attendees could buy consoles the moment they went on sale.

The sales for both consoles are only going on in certain Best Buy locations, the retailer said.

Along with the sale, Best Buy is running a promotion on certain Xbox One games for customers who have bought and brought in that game's Xbox 360 counterpart as trade-in. Best Buy says it's giving up to $40 of in-store credit for some of those titles, which come with an extra $10 trade-in coupon when they're purchased, all in an effort to bolster the sales of titles that developers are launching on both the older and newer game platforms.