An interview conducted by the BBC's website with Microsoft vice president of worldwide marketing and publishing, Peter Moore has revealed the company's jitters regarding the forthcoming near-simultaneous global launch of the Xbox 360 console.

In the interview, Moore commented of the worldwide release of the next-gen console, which is due out on November 22 in North America, December 2 in Europe and December 10 in Japan: "There's a reason no-one has done this before and we are figuring that out." He also added: “If we knew what we were getting into, we might not have done it.”

Staggered global launches has traditionally always been used by other consoles, including the first Xbox, which launched on November 15, 2001 in the U.S. and March 14, 2002 in Europe, with basic logistics and a lack of stock being the main reasons for doing so. Even after delaying the European launch of its PSP handheld for an almost unprecedented nine months, Sony has continued to experience stock problems with both hardware and software.

"We're going to ship all around the world; how we're going to do that, I don't know," said Moore. "We're going to rent every 747 we can find." Moore also noted that Microsoft has over 2,500 staff worldwide working to ensure the success of the global launch.

This follows similar admissions from corporate vice president J Allard who also admitted in a recent interview that he did not expect the launch to go flawlessly, but that he still felt that the near-simultaneous debut was “the right thing to do”.

Gamesutra