Update: the London Microsoft Store

I posted a Q a while back, askingif anyone had been to the new store in central London. Nobody had - yet. Well, my son and I went down there last Thursday and I'm happy to say it was an excellent experience.

The store is spread over two main floors - there is a third but I think they keep that for hosting private events. The ground floor is your standard lobby entrance. A few tables hosting a selection of Windows machines, etc. The first floor is where it gets
fun.

A lot of it taken up with displays of MS and partners' products. Loads of Surface tablets, just about every MS peripheral. Also a fair bit of Samsung mobile cross-promotion. We didn't go there for that though - we wanted the Xbox area.

This takes up a decent-sized room, seperated from the main floor by a tunnel filled with green accent lighting and Xbox peripherals. Controller displays, HDD's, etc. Once you're through that, it's playtime. We took part in an Overwatch tournament and MS
really gave us the pro-gamer experience. They have two rows of five 'pods'. Each has a high-spec PC and an Xbox One X set up. Razr Chroma mice and keyboards. I had a pair of Razr Nari Ultimate headphones. Each pod has its own cam and paired monitors inbetween
the rows so you can see what each player is doing. The staff are still getting used to running tournaments, but, they did a great job and I highly recommend taking part.

There are plenty of other gaming stations there too. Massive monitors, fully-specced seated driving-game controllers. Free-gaming at lots of Xboxes set up around the room. Comfy seating Really, MS have spared no expense making this place state of the
art. I talked to an American staff member who is here on a temporary transfer from a US MS store, helping the locals learn how to run it. He said they have stuff in London they don't have in California.

If you like gaming and live in or close to London, you ought to get something out of a trip to the store.

:)