I’ve been trying to help people out with this information in post replies but I’ve been needing to repeat the same information over and over again so I thought I’d share it here in hopes of reaching the most people.
The game will be available at midnight on the 27th New Zealand time or 5:00 a.m. PST on the 26th if you’re in America.
- When changing your Xbox to New Zealand make sure you’re switching it to New Zealand via the region option. Switching the time zone to New Zealand does nothing but change the time that’s displayed on the Xbox.
You want to make sure in the Xbox settings you’re actually changing the region location, you can verify you did this correctly as the Xbox will ask to restart, you can access the Microsoft store and and verify that the currency for games is being displayed in NZ$
-Sometimes Xbox games don’t unlock as seamlessly as they do on something like PlayStation, it can take up to 10 minutes after midnight New Zealand time for the game to actually launch, sometimes restarting your Xbox or re-logging in your account will allow you to launch the game.
Important for Ubisoft+ players: as soon as the game unlocks in New Zealand to make sure you can play as quickly as possible make sure you select the game title on the dashboard, hit the start or select button (forgot which one) and select manage game, from there you should see the ultimate edition content will now be available to be enabled/downloaded, go ahead and enable and download it it needed.
If you don’t do this step your Xbox will do it for you eventually but there is sometimes a delay.
-For Ubisoft+ members who want to preload: download the Xbox app on your phone click the magnifying glass on the bottom search the game, click the game when it comes up and then click download to console, it’s that easy.
The Xbox app lets you download any game to your console regardless of if you own it or not. (You can’t start it of course unless you have the proper privileges) But this allows you to essentially preload the game if you’re a Ubisoft+ member or just want the game we’re ready to go on your console in case you decide to purchase after the reviews.
That’s about it, hopefully this helps people out. Using the New Zealand trick on Xbox is something that works for nearly all games that don’t have a set Global release time, and it’s worked without issue in the past for other Ubisoft releases on Ubisoft+ such as Avatar and Assassin’s Creed Mirage. As long as you do everything correctly you shouldn’t have any problem playing tomorrow.