They could have saved themselves some embarrassment and said no specific number of regions until they knew for certain, no one would have cared. This gets back to the rudderless ship analogy, what is going on at MS? I guess there is still time and they could do another 180 and add more regions.
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They could have saved themselves some embarrassment and said no specific number of regions until they knew for certain, no one would have cared. This gets back to the rudderless ship analogy, what is going on at MS? I guess there is still time and they could do another 180 and add more regions.
I think Brazil is part of the launch and they speak Portuguese there.... Can't comment on dialect though, I think it's a bit more musical (more inflection) than Portugal.
I prefer the Portuguese from Portugal, and I love Portugal and its people... I also love their accent and talking to them 'cos of that.
I can understand it almost perfectly -although I don't speak Portuguese very well since I am Galician, and nationalist
- but speaking it like native people isn't that easy for me.The news might confirm there are actual problems with yields, time will tell.... For those living in one of the countries where the console isn't going to launch on day one and pre-ordered the console, Microsoft are giving a game for free with the console.
No. Happens every gen. Sony notified the public of a PS3 euro launch delay in September 06. In fact Sony didn't announce the spring to fall 06 delay until march of 2006. MS notified the public of a Xbox OG japan launch delay in August 01. PS2 1 month delay for the UK in aug 2000.
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How do you get those two at the same time?
Where do you live? 'Cos I live in Northwestern Spain and Spain is a country made of countries -there are 4 different official languages-. I speak Galician most of the time, which is my mother's tongue btw..
Galician for instance has some celtic words because the celts settled here first -we play bagpipes and stuff- although it's mostly a romance language.
Europe is so rich, culturally wise, you wouldn't believe... :smile: That's why I love it. Even here in Galicia we have different accents and words depending on what you want to express.
I speak 4 languages -almost perfectly just 3 or so- and because of that I learnt that each language has a point and a reason to exist.
I love English, for instance, but there are expressions that lose all the meaning, sense and charm if you translate them literally to English.
Go Celta de Vigo, go!Bah , Juve is the best team in the world
Back on subject, one Wasteland 2 developer say that Microsoft are truly interested in indie games for the Xbox One.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Micr...x-One-Says-Wasteland-2-Developer-375386.shtml
haha , yea , my family is from molfeta and juve is the team they love . My dad moved here when he was 16. So my dad and I try to watch games as often as possible to bond since he still can't beat world 1-2 in Mario brothers.... he's been trying for 25 years or so now lol
AC Milan could do well this year. I doubt it though.
If that's the case, t's another case of Kinect ruining things.
Who cares? Do we even know how many Sony is launching in to compare with? So much spin with every Xbox news...this would just pass unnoticed or with a shrug for other consoles.
Because I like numbers, I started breaking Europe down by population to get a better idea of the market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_population
First off I threw out Russia or any former Eastern Bloc countries like Romania, Czech Republic etc. I figure there are not too many consoles sold there still. Russia is actually probably a decently growing console market from what I know, and that's likely why it's in MS second tier of markets for release.
Anyways total population of "Europe" by Wiki is 737m, but it's really something more like 450m or less for what you'd loosely call "Western" Europe if you toss Russia (143m) Ukraine (45m) Poland (38m) Romania (20m) Czech Republic (11m) Hungary (10m) Belarus (9m) Bulgaria (7m) which is 283m right there. Yes that's a lot of people but the more important point is how many consoles are sold there, and it's likely not too many just yet. Anyways 737m-283m=454m which we might call Western Europe. It's actually probably closer to 400m if you toss the various even smaller Eastern Bloc countries dotting the landscape like Serbia (7m).
So the markets MS hits 1st wave and population
Germany ~81m
UK~64m
France~64m
Italy~60m
Spain ~47m
Austria (kind of an odd one)~8m
Total population of 1st wave markets=324m.
Keeping in mind our generalized West EU=400m statement, you can say they hit the majority of Western Europe population (and likely even more weighted by console sales) right there.
2nd wave EU markets for Xbox release (note the lower populations):
Belgium 11m
Denmark 6m
Finland 5m
Netherlands 17m
Norway 5m
Sweden 10m
Switzerland 8m
=62m (basically a single UK sized market for perspective, although sales I'd wildly guess are more like half of UK)
+Russia 143m
You can basically see their strategy, they are picking up the vast bulk of the population of the Western Europe market on the first run, and most of the rest along with Russia on the 2nd.
Literally the only West EU countries of note they're not picking up in the first two waves are Greece being the biggest at just 11m, Portugal 11m, Ireland at 5m is next but I imagine it's considered part of UK and included there, there's literally nothing else except micro states. Greece and Portugal also have poor economies (and Portugal is the worst of Sony lands IIRC as well, so those markets are probably low on MS priority list and low on sales totals as well).
This list of countries MS is releasing does tell us the likely most relevant console markets though, and it's not any surprise for sales lovers like me, but for others it might be interesting specifically Brazil, Mexico, and Russia being included shows they are the most important emerging console markets.
SedentaryJourney
Regular
It's somewhat hard to comprehend that MS didn't know this back in May when they announced launch territories. Their console leans heavily on a language interface unlike iOS, where you can do a slow rollout of Siri, so to announce in 8 markets when your language support isn't complete or near complete is a major gaffe. It's also costly since they're offering free software as consolation.
So either MS lacked foresight and didn't get its homework done on time or there are yield issues associated with manufacturing a 5 billion transistor part and they have to be strategic about where they launch. I know which sounds more plausible to me.
All the negative publicity caught them off guard & thus the backpedaling. I bet that added a lot of extra work in order to meet launch window. So I'm sure had that not happened they might have had enough to time to finish the localizations & launch in those other countries.
Tommy McClain
Tommy McClain
It is a question of resources and time. Developers over-promise and under-deliver, changes from up high cause a reshuffling of resources, and sometimes infrastructure buildout doesn't go to plan. Then management come back to the teams and ask for what needs to be cut to make launch. Extra languages (for speech and localisation) are often the first thing to get cut, because they're nice and self contained, they're ridiculously expensive to build the speech models, and they have huge testing costs. We did the same thing for Kinect launch, we cut a number of languages and regions a couple of months before launch.
Then why open their mouth and say a number? Not knowing is fine.
If this delay is due to kinect voice control it kind of proves how that good voice control is very hard to do .
Which sucks for the countries losing out for a few months .....but if it means a lot more role playing games will use voice control in the future then I'm all for it .
I've said this before skyrim voice control using kinect is one of the most impressive things ever in a game in my opinion .
Not only that but in my opinion added so much to my over all enjoyment of the game .
This news if it is is kinect voice related just goes to prove good voice control is not easy to do after all ....I personally thing voice control in game is one of the next big leaps in game design and game control .
I'm basing this on my enjoyment of skyrim with voice control it just added so much to the game in my opinion .if on the Xbox one voice control can be pushed even more using the cloud then I'm sure Microsoft will have a killer control method on there hands .
Delaying the launch in some countries to make sure voice control works seamless day one just shows Microsoft commitment to voice control on the Xbox one which means one thing developers will no that any voice control they add to there games will work in all countries from day one .
Which I'm hoping will mean higher adoption and experimentation of voice control in game exspecialy from a personal view point in role playing games .
Which sucks for the countries losing out for a few months .....but if it means a lot more role playing games will use voice control in the future then I'm all for it .
I've said this before skyrim voice control using kinect is one of the most impressive things ever in a game in my opinion .
Not only that but in my opinion added so much to my over all enjoyment of the game .
This news if it is is kinect voice related just goes to prove good voice control is not easy to do after all ....I personally thing voice control in game is one of the next big leaps in game design and game control .
I'm basing this on my enjoyment of skyrim with voice control it just added so much to the game in my opinion .if on the Xbox one voice control can be pushed even more using the cloud then I'm sure Microsoft will have a killer control method on there hands .
Delaying the launch in some countries to make sure voice control works seamless day one just shows Microsoft commitment to voice control on the Xbox one which means one thing developers will no that any voice control they add to there games will work in all countries from day one .
Which I'm hoping will mean higher adoption and experimentation of voice control in game exspecialy from a personal view point in role playing games .
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I messed up some minor things there, not understanding how the whole "Ireland/UK" thing works. Ireland is a separate market listed first wave by MS at 5m. Doesn't change much.
However thought it'd be fun to add up the total console market populations here as semi-defined by MS's first two waves of release nations (but fairly applicable to all). It's actually more than I thought (probably less than many of you thought)
391m for the EU markets MS is hitting in the first two waves.
143m Russia
192m Brazil
313m USA
112m Mexico
4m New Zealand
22m Australia
34m Canada
Total is 1,211 million, 1.211 billion.
A major market missing is Japan at 127m. Puts it over 1.3B. Actually quite a lot higher than I expected.
After that I'm not sure of various console markets and the state of them. I'm pretty sure there's some market in places like South Korea and Taiwan, although consoles mostly dont exist in a big way in southeast asia, it is all F2P PC/mobile there... How about a place like Argentina? Dont really know.
World population according to Google currently sits at ~7.1B. So the 1.3B console market is ~18%.
Obviously the big low hanging fruit if you wanted to get that up would be China (1.4B) and India (1.2B). However I dont think it's that easy.
i think they've been making noises that direction but havent really kept up.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
China has only recently lifted the ban on foreign game consoles being sold in China, with some restrictions.
The respective companies must register and get approval from the government for each product they wish to sell.
Anything related to social media sites (facebook, twitter, etc.) must be removed.
Any games sold must be submitted for approval by the Chinese government so they don't contain anything too violent or "politically inappropriate."
So, every single indie game or publisher backed game would have to get approval before they could be sold on the consoles in China. That's a potential minefield for both Sony and Microsoft with self published titles. I imagine there is likely going to be a fee associated with each game submittal.
That said, consoles have always been available through the grey market (being funneled in through Hong Kong and Macau). But this generation will be the first where foreign consoles can legitimately be sold in mainland China. As long as you jump through the right hoops.
Oh and I believe they must all be sold only in the Shanghai Integrated Free Trade Zone (SIFTZ) or they must be manufactured there. I see conflicting reports on that. And SIFTZ still hasn't been built.
Regards,
SB
That is the weird one. That and Ireland. Localisation for those countries is presumably as hard as any other (maybe Austrian German is very close to German German? Ireland isn't going to be easy to accomodate, with two languages and thick accents).
I can only guess that MS picked Austria as not too hard to do, and Ireland has reason. A little Googling suggests gaming is a growth industry there.
We really need a breakdown of console revenues for each territory, as it may be as simple as that.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
English/Ireland was one of the original dialects at least in the Windows version of Kinect. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/focus/nui/kinect-windows.aspx
Notice all of those are dialects that will be in use in the launch countries.
I suspect that Microsoft Ireland was likely central in the localization for Europe, and hence there wouldn't have been a reason for the team there not to have included support for the Irish dialect of English.
Austria is definitely odd, however.
Regards,
SB
Notice all of those are dialects that will be in use in the launch countries.
I suspect that Microsoft Ireland was likely central in the localization for Europe, and hence there wouldn't have been a reason for the team there not to have included support for the Irish dialect of English.
Austria is definitely odd, however.
Regards,
SB
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