Hogwarts Legacy is available to download right now

It’s been a long time coming, but the release of Hogwarts Legacy is right around the corner for those with new-gen consoles and PCs.

Not everyone will be able to play the wizarding world RPG on the same day - the title has been pushed back to April for those on PS4 and Xbox One, and won’t release until July on Nintendo Switch (I’m still curious to see how it’s even going to run on there, to be honest). But, for fans on Xbox Series X/S, there's some exciting news.

None other than Simon Pegg will be voicing Hogwarts Legacy’s headmaster, Phineas Nigellus Black - check out his introduction to the character below.

As highlighted on the r/HarryPotterGame subreddit, Hogwarts Legacy is currently available to preload on Xbox Series X/S. This means that anyone who’s preordered the game digitally can download the whole thing right now (if you’ve not preordered yet, you can do so at any point before release and still download it early).

Don’t get too excited though - although the full game is right there and ready to go, this doesn’t mean that it’s accessible yet. The title will remain locked until release date - or until the early-access period starts, for those dedicated fans. Since it’s a pretty chunky download file, it’s still worth setting it going now so that you can dive straight in as soon as it becomes available to play.

This won't be exciting news to everyone - many gamers are opting to avoid the game altogether due to its connection to J.K. Rowling, who has been criticised for making harmful comments about the transgender community. The author hasn't been directly involved in the development of the game, but will certainly still benefit from its sales since she's the creator of the wizarding world franchise.

Recently, a number of Series X/S players reported that their Digital Deluxe preorders of Hogwarts Legacy had been cancelled. This was due to the delay of the Xbox One version, which comes included in this edition. It might be worth checking to see if this happened to you, just in case you need to put in another preorder.

At the time of writing, it doesn’t seem that Hogwarts Legacy preloads are available on PS5, but fear not, that doesn’t mean that the game is going to be coming out late - it seems that it’ll be downloadable closer to the actual release date instead.