Albert Panello, Microsoft’s senior director of product management and planning, has spoken to GameSpot advising customers to only place their Xbox One consoles horizontally and only to place vertically “at your own risk”.

“We don’t support vertical orientation; do it at your own risk,” he told GameSpot. “It wouldn’t be a cooling problem, we just didn’t design the drive for vertical. Because it’s a slot loading drive, we just didn’t design it for both.”

“We found, interestingly enough, that 80 per cent of people, believe it or not, have their Xbox [360] horizontally.”

This decision from Microsoft is not necessarily an uncommon one with GameSpot noting that the earlier models of PS3 console also only supporting a horizontal orientation. With the Xbox One selling out for pre-orders and due for release November 22nd, does this new information affect you as a customer in anyway? Let us know what you think in the comments below.