The unveiling of the Xbox One X console at E3 this year. (Photo Via Livestream)

Microsoft is delaying the release of the highly anticipated game Crackdown 3 from Nov. 7, the same day the new Xbox One X drops, to spring 2018.

Polygon first reported the news, and Microsoft officials told the gaming site that the delay is to give the title’s developers more time to deliver the best game possible. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer echoed the sentiment on Twitter.

Shannon Loftis, Microsoft Studios Publishing general manager, told Polygon that the early lineup of games for the Xbox One X remains strong, with titles like the console launch exclusive PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, as well as coming Xbox titles like Forza Motorsport 7, Cuphead, Super Lucky’s Tale. But, as The Verge notes, with the Crackdown 3 delay, the new console could launch without a corresponding major new game to entice people to buy on day one.

Recent history has shown the value of having a strong game to go along with the release of a new console. The Nintendo Switch Console has been a hit with 2.74 million units sold in its first month on store shelves and 4.7 million as of the end of the last quarter. A big part of that is both the critical and commercial success of its flagship game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which at one point was actually outselling the console.

Xbox One X, previously code-named Project Scorpio, will join the existing Xbox One and Xbox One S consoles when it launches Nov. 7 and sell for $499.

The company is touting the Xbox One X as the most powerful console ever made, with a 6 teraflop GPU, clocked at 1.172 Ghz, 12GB of GDDR5 graphics memory and 326 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It will support 4K video, with 8 million pixels and high-dynamic range (HDR). Xbox One X will also be the smallest Xbox the company has built.

Microsoft says all Xbox One accessories and games will work on Xbox One X, and games will be more vivid with faster load times. A technique called supersampling will look better on 1080p displays, not just 4K screens, according to the company. The console uses a liquid-cooled vapor chamber normally reserved for computer servers.

Spencer said on Twitter that information about preorders should come later today, and he hinted that Xbox’s showing at the big Gamescom in Germany next week “will be different from what fans expect but I’m excited.”

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