After months of buildup, Titanfall is finally here. The game's launch officially kicked off at 11 p.m. ET last night with a live event from SXSW in Austin. There were developer walkthroughs of new Titanfall maps, fan Q&As, and more.

For those not at SXSW (perhaps you were waiting in line at a midnight opening), there was a live-stream of the event on Twitch, which launches live broadcasting for the Xbox One today in conjunction with the Titanfall release.

As described by developer Respawn, "the advanced combat techniques of Titanfall give you the freedom to fight your way as both elite assault Pilot and fast, heavily armored Titan." In his hands on with the beta version of Titanfall, PCMag's Jeff Wilson admitted to not being a first-person shooter (FPS) fan, but found that Titanfall "feels like a fresh shooter even in its current beta state."

If you didn't snag your copy early this morning, the Standard Edition is available for Xbox 360, Xbox One, as a PC download, or via a physical PC disc for $59.99. Buy it via Origin, Amazon.com, Best Buy, GameStop, Target, or Walmart.

A Deluxe Edition, which includes the Titanfall Season Pass with three new content packs is available as a PC download for $79.99. For the really big spenders, there's a Collector's Edition - which includes an 18-inch Titan statue, hardcover book, Atlas Titan poster, and a Titanfall game - for $249.99 for Xbox and PC. And if you have yet to buy Microsoft's new console, the $500 Xbox One Titanfall bundle includes the console, Kinect sensor, wireless controller, chat headset, a Titanfall download coard, and one month of free Xbox Live Gold.

For those running Titanfall on a PC, there are some minimum requirements: a 64-bit Windows PC running Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP1, or Windows 8; a 2.8GHz AMD Athlon X2 or 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; at least 4GB of RAM; at least 50GB of free hard drive space; an AMD Radeon HD 4770 with 512MB of RAM or better, or an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT with 512MB RAM or better; DirectX 11; and a speedy Internet connection.

The Xbox One recently got an update in preparation for Titanfall. In what Xbox chief Marc Whitten called the "most significant" system update for Xbox One to date, the update included "improved matchmaking, party chat and friends features that will make gaming on Xbox One an experience like no other," he said. "To me that means playing games like Titanfall on the best multiplayer service on the planet, using a new headset or the one you already own, while live broadcasting your games on Twitch." Titanfall is all about multi-player; the game pits two teams of six (plus their mechs) on one of two beta maps.

Of course, that means you might encounter some server delays as gamers hop on to get a taste of Titanfall; "Titanfall is an online multiplayer game, we will not offer offline modes," according to the game's official Twitter feed. That drew complaints from several gamers on Twitter in the wee hours.

Absolutely ridiculous that you buy a game at midnight ready to play it and the servers are down. #pissedoff #Titanfall — I'mthatdudeTj (@itisMillerTiM3) March 11, 2014

#titanfall is turning into a TitanFAIL with these servers being down. —  Ryan SKiP Alston  (@skip336) March 11, 2014

Vince Zampella from Respawn suggested that gamers who are "stuck at Initializing ... should cancel and re-search." The company also released a patch to fix some bugs, though some gamers were still encountering difficulties.

Let's hope the Titanfall launch is a bit more successful than SimCity and the GTA Online launch.

For more, check out PCMag's hands on with the Titanfall beta for Xbox One (slideshow above), as well as 10 Tips That'll Make You a Titanfall God.

Also watch PCMag Live in the video below, which discusses the Titanfall launch.

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