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Xbox One tier 2 delay not due to localization issues

kruis

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Tier 2 countries have been waiting for almost a year for the Xbox One to be launched in their country. Most people believed it was due to the difficulty of adding voice command support for less widely spoken languages like Dutch.

It turns out that MS has been sitting on their hands the whole time, since in the Netherlands and Belgium the Xbox One will launch without support for voice commands in Dutch according to Gamer.nl. So what was MS waiting for?

It is possible to set up the X1 to use English voice commands, but in that case the dashboard language has to be set to English too.
 
Shadow Broker

Shadow Broker

Banned
Holy crap! I seriously thought both the Bone and PS4 were released in all markets already. I mean c'mon, these different launguages didn't appear over night and have been around for quite some time.
 
P

PrivateWHudson

Member
kruis said:
Tier 2 countries have been waiting for almost a year for the Xbox One to be launched in their country. Most people believed it was due to the difficulty of adding voice command support for less widely spoken languages like Dutch.

It turns out that MS has been sitting on their hands the whole time, since in the Netherlands and Belgium the Xbox One will launch without support for voice commands in Dutch according to Gamer.nl. So what was MS waiting for?

It is possible to set up the X1 to use English voice commands, but in that case the dashboard language has to be set to English too.
Click to expand...

Not quite fair to say most people believed it was due to language support, we were directly told that was the reason.
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Uh, i thought it was obvious when they announced the delay that they were desperate to stuff the channel of their biggest territories early. This involved delaying the 'tier 2' areas.

Unfortunately, they are still loosing everywhere so it doesn't seem to have worked.
 
P

PranooY

Member
No one believed that reason, because in many of the tier 2 countries they are launching with English menu and English language detecting kinect. (Eg.: India - Doesn't use any tech products in native language. All products are in English)

Actual reason is: They just wanted to concentrate on the markets where they generally sell well.
 
S

Shrike_Priest

Member
The only reason they didn't fast track it is when they say the spring sales is probably because leftover supply from the Tier 1-countries has been exported by the retailers into the Tier 2-countries. Save money on adding extra shipment routes and inventory management? But surely a big marketing push in Tier 2 could have added SOME sales.

That's the only semi-probably reason I can think of.
 
S

Shiggy

Member
So what was the reason for the delay if it was neither a lack of stock nor localisation issues? Hasn't there been some kind of unofficial launch anyway? The X1 is readily available over here in Sweden despite not officially launching yet.
 
CassidyIzABeast

CassidyIzABeast

Member
Localization wasn't coming together and the Kinect was adding an extra $100 to the price tag. Now that they've put Kinect in a bodybag, no more need to worry about localizing.
 
X

Xando

Member
Shiggy said:
So what was the reason for the delay if it was neither a lack of stock nor localisation issues? Hasn't there been some kind of unofficial launch anyway? The X1 is readily available over here in Sweden despite not officially launching yet.
Click to expand...
Maybe they projected to sell out in Tier 1 countries.
 
K

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
I pretty much assumes that Kinect development was scrapped when it was unbundled. This doesn't surprise me.
 
P

ProfessorMoran

Member
kruis said:
Tier 2 countries have been waiting for almost a year for the Xbox One to be launched in their country. Most people believed it was due to the difficulty of adding voice command support for less widely spoken languages like Dutch.

It turns out that MS has been sitting on their hands the whole time, since in the Netherlands and Belgium the Xbox One will launch without support for voice commands in Dutch according to Gamer.nl. So what was MS waiting for?

It is possible to set up the X1 to use English voice commands, but in that case the dashboard language has to be set to English too.
Click to expand...
Marketing? Or are they having trouble with manufacturing yield?
 
L

LordBaztion

Member
Yep, this long delay makes no sense. If the reason was to keep a steady supply for tier 1, then they should have been ready to launch by may after supllying Titanfall or the kinect-less SKU in june
 
M

mrg6290

Member
Localization was the reason. Everyone took this to just mean language localization. Everyone was wrong.

MS just needs more transparency and needs to make it clear all that they lump under the term localization.
 
P

PureXbox

Banned
Marketing. Pure and simple.

Release new product at Christmas in all zones, or release new product toward Christmas in the major zones, then release it again the following Christmas with a fresh advertising push (now there's more content in place and customer feedback has been made available and been acted upon) in the "second tier" zones?

I get the feeling someone kinda thought it would be a good idea to be the only "new console" on the market for Christmas 2014 in tier two. That someone, was wrong.
 
K

KHlover

Banned
PureXbox said:
Marketing. Pure and simple.

Release new product at Christmas in all zones, or release new product toward Christmas in the major zones, then release it again the following Christmas with a fresh advertising push (now there's more content in place and customer feedback has been made available and been acted upon) in the "second tier" zones?

I get the feeling someone kinda thought it would be a good idea to be the only "new console" on the market for Christmas 2014 in tier two. That someone, was wrong.
Click to expand...

That would make sense if the console hadn't been in every bigger store since launch already (Germany pushing out their stock to Europe since MS horribly overestimated demand here) and failed to move throughout the year.

Hard to push a console that customers have proven they don't want anyways. Christmas will nevertheless be important. If sales don't drastically improve with MCC and the soft launch of Tier 2 countries we can officially start the race for place 2 against the WiiU.
 
E

Etnos

Banned
Probably because the marketing and administrative cost of importing-selling the machine there against most likely poor sales estimates doesn't make it a great business for them. Those are expensive countries to operate on.

But, who knows...
 
S

sangreal

Member
Albert Penello has been telling you for a year now that he didn't mean voice support when he mentioned localization issues

Albert Penello said:
I’m going to state it again, just like I said here and to OXM: The delay was localization related. Besides needing local language support, we also need to prop-up local Live, Apps, a Marketplace, and a variety of other services. We bundle that together as “localization” in messaging, but there is more to shipping in a region then text and voice translation.
Click to expand...

(08-27-2013, 02:02 PM)
 
V

vcc

Member
I suspected it was production issues since their APU is larger than the PS4 one that makes sense that it would reduced yield. Not by much but enough to make it unable to spreads themselves out and still 'win' in their key market; the US/CA/UK. So they concentrated their units to try to score a early win on new generation hype.

It worked and they out sold the PS4 for a month in the US/CA/UK market but the bad press caught up with them and that initial win didn't mean anything in the long run. They also wouldn't have moved that many units in the tier 2 markets because they have little history there and the genres they're most known for (FPS) is not as popular in other markets. As well they really geared the XB1 to American markets with a lot of their app features and TV features.
 
D

DidntKnowJack

Member
Yeah, basically tier 2 countries were not and still are not a priority for MS. It's a strategy to sell as many units in the early stages of this hardware generation in the largest markets and some of you tier 2 countries just don''t fit that bill.

God. Just saying "tier 2 countries" makes me sound like an asshole.
 
S

Sayers

Member
Sony scared the shit out of them so they diverted all supply to stuff the channels in their biggest markets. Didn't save them.
 
E

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
The problem has probably always been the localization of voice commands in the store/Bing, not the basic voice commands for navigating the UI.

Still not a convincing excuse, since the store can be used without any voice commands, and voice commands could alternatively be implemented generically ("Item 1", "Item 2", etc. instead of "Game of Thrones", or "Halo" etc.). Wonder how the Dutch store will deal with this.
 
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