Xbox One up for pre-order for £20 upfront from Asda
£20 buys you a voucher code that you'll put into the Asda site when the One goes on sale, giving you priority and £20 off the final price.
Bum-patting megashop Asda is the latest to open pre-orders for the Xbox One, with Microsoft's next-gen console costing £20 upfront to guarantee you one One on launch day.
£20 buys you a voucher code that you'll put into the Asda site when the One goes on sale, giving you priority delivery and £20 off the final price.
That's the opposite approach to sites such as Amazon and Zavvi, which don't charge you anything upfront but commit you to buying it at whatever they charge, up to £600 for Amazon and up to £400 for Zavvi.
You can only pre-order a single One from Asda, with duplicate orders deleted, the supermarket sternly promises. "Customers using their unique pre-order discount code will be sent their Xbox One first and before other regular orders. You will need to keep this code safe until you need to use it," it warns.
"If there is more than one version or bundle of the Xbox One at launch in Asda, we will give you a choice on which version you would like to buy."
You can cancel your pre-order at any time and get your £20 back. Asda isn't picking a date for the Xbox One launch, unlike other retailers who've pegged it at 30 November. The supermarket just says it's expected to be out by Christmas and they'll email you when you can claim your order.
The advantage of pre-ordering with Asda is you're not committed to spending a huge amount of money, beyond the £20 you're paying up front. It's unlikely, however, that Amazon or Zavvi will be more expensive than anywhere else -- they'll all be desperate to be the cheapest.
It might well be worth registering a pre-order now just to be sure, and then seeing what everyone's prices are like a few weeks before launch, when there's still time to pre-order. You might end up further down the queue, but you might save a few quid too.
Where have you pre-ordered consoles from before? Any terrible or brilliant experiences you can warn us of, or recommend? Talk day-one tactics in the comments below, or over on our bargain-basement Facebook page.