This is gonna be a long one.
If you fixed that, thanks. Not 100% correct, but It's better than what it was so thank you
To answer a couple topics specifically. (and I don't know how to multi-quote, so I'm doing it the old fashioned way. Hope this works.)
Not true. There were a lot of indications we needed to change. To say it was specifically that is not true, simply because there are other factors that could affect pre-order data. I don't know how many units they actually released for pre-order, which could also affect the number. For example: If they released 400,000 units, and we released 100,000 units, that could give them a 4:1 ratio. Nobody knows exactly how many units were allocated for pre-sale by Sony. I don't even know exactly how many we released.
To be honest, I never heard the 4:1 internally. I heard the same rumors. To keep myself honest, I don't report on things unless I
actually know. And as stated above, lots of things could affect the ratios.
So again, no. Wasn't just preorders. It was a variety of reasons, and in the end I'm glad we changed.
I don't see it that way from my seat. We made ONE big change around digital, as stated above. There was a lot of follow-on (like family sharing) related to that. The other changes were, frankly, pretty typical for console launches. I've done three of them now. I've been in the inside of the industry since the Sega Genesis days.
What's unprecedented is the amount of information publicly disclosed, which makes it
seem different. Things get tweaked, revised, reversed, added and removed SO much as you approach launch. So again, having a bunch of stuff change like this for launch is typical. What's not typical is for us to change what we've *announced*
I would never read anything into what I do or don't respond to. I only respond if I know the answer as fact. I know we slipped countries due to localization issues, but I don't know why we slipped that region. The only thing I would generally assume is that I don't know the exact answer, and saying "I don't know" a lot would get irritating.
Nothing I do here is "cleared" by PR. I'm lucky enough to be a position to choose to do this. I am, however, respectful of the organization and try not to create work for them. So, as was posted above, I don't comment on rumors or things I know we're not talking about. That's just courtesy to the team. And I do ask sometimes for clarity on topics we've disclosed. But these posts are mine and mine alone.
To put this out there - I WILL be doing "official PR" at Gamescom next week. You'll probably see interviews and stuff, and that's all "on the record" PR. By the way, if anyone is at Gamescom come to the booth and say hi. I'd love to meet you guys in person. Even the people that don't like us.
Since I'm old and my memory goes, I went to Wikipedia on this one. According to that, we were in 11 countries before the end of the year we launched. We rolled out another 15 the following year. So 13 in one year beats that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_launch
This time it's complicated by our need to have deep voice recognition. So it's not apples-to-apples with the amount of work needed to launch a territory.
Anyway, hope that helps. Not that this had anything to do with our new policies around region-locking, which I think are awesome and should help out our European customers in particular greatly.