It wouldn't take a minister from the Department of the Bleedin' Obvious to tell us that the launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360 will be a major event come November. Months of hype and speculation will come to a head when all the wild promises receive the ultimate litmus test - the living room benchmark.

Of course whether or not you will be able (presuming you're willing) to participate in this great worldwide frenzy of Xbox 360 play from November 22nd onwards is another matter. The moment Microsoft began to make grandiose statements about a near-simultaneous worldwide release for the console, releasing it November 22nd in the US, December 2nd in Europe and then December 10th in Japan, I began to groan.

Worldwide releases just haven't been the most successful of late, and by the looks of things nobody has learned their lessons from such gaffes as the PlayStation Portable launch cum fiasco.

In the case of Sony's PSP, one of the worlds most powerful and influential technology companies managed to turn what was supposed to be a relatively simultaneous worldwide release into a six month running gun battle.

Expecting huge demand and fearing shortages, Sony diverted the units destined to hit European shop shelves on March 18th to America, covering themselves against any of the expected shortages.

On the face of it they looked right to do so, having already sold over a million handhelds in Sony crazy Japan. This view was further reinforced when the PSP went on to sell over a half a million units in the first two days on retail in the US.

A significant number not to be underestimated indeed, though there is a catch; in the next five days the PSP only sold another 100,000 units in America, bringing the total number sold in the first week of US release to 600,000; only half of all the PSP's they had stocked up on in North America at European expense.

Things became embarrassing when Sony tried to prevent e-tailors from importing PSP's from overseas, and for the six months between the original March European release date and the eventual September 2005 release all European gamers had to console themselves with were constantly broken release date promises and court circuses involving importers and the Big-Bad-Sony.

Perhaps I tell a slight lie when I say that nobody has learned the lesson of the PSP and worldwide releases. You can bet your pre-order that Microsoft will not make the same panicky mistake and fumble the ball with the Xbox 360 release. They're not worried about ensuring that North America has a bountiful supply of the console whilst Europeans starve on screenshot morsels. Instead, in a move that might make Marx oddly proud, Microsoft is going to give us all a handful of Xbox 360's rather than giving one group the lot.