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So, Elden Ring has got some impressive reviews, huh? Now it seems that the excitement levels are through the roof. It is now leading some players to wonder how to play Elden Ring early. The good news is you likely can as long as you’re on specific platforms.
For the eagle-eyed out there, you may have noticed that most regions and platform for Elden Ring has a global release time. For PC, this means that your game will go live at the same time as everyone else in the world. Sadly, it means you have to wait until the time it comes out in your region to play the game.
However, now this is a big, however, Xbox players can technically cheat the system. Xbox has some decent preload and launches windows. It is one of the reasons Xbox players can preload things much earlier than everyone else. This comes in handy when a game launches at midnight local time.
How to play Elden Ring early on Xbox
If you go into your system settings, press language, and location, and change your location to New Zealand, you can theoretically play the game when it goes live in NZ. It is known to work for other games, and it is why we say it will theoretically work for Elden Ring. It means if you’re a European, you can expect to play the game 12 hours earlier if you get on it as soon as it’s midnight time in NZ. Meanwhile, the US can get it 18-20 hours earlier using this method. Unfortunately, PlayStation users do not have this feature and will have to wait till midnight local time.
Other than that, there does not appear to be any other way to play Elden Ring early. You might be one of those that get your preorder through the post early, which technically lets you play the game early, but it is before the Day 1 patch. However, that means your experience is more than likely bug-filled, as Day 1 patches tend to fix pre-launch issues dramatically. It’s up to you though.
Can you play Elden Ring early on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5?
Technically yes, but is it worth all the effort, maybe not.
To play Elden Ring early on a PlayStation console you will have to follow a similar route to that of the Xbox solution, however, you will also need to create a brand new PlayStation account with the location set as New Zealand. Of course, with the new PSN account, you will also need to purchase a copy of Elden Ring, so for those who have already pre-ordered it is probably not worth it, for those who have yet to purchase go right ahead!
Note: if you do go and purchase Elden Ring on the newly created New Zealand PSN account be sure to use PSN credit that you purchased through the New Zealand PSN store. Good luck!
If you fancy some extra reading, we are building an Elden Ring hub, filled with guides on classes, equipment, and bosses.
