XOne will only work in these Countries at launch (1.5mbps)

@dizzymedal said:

@fluxwavez said:

Map of where the Xbox One will and won't work at launch:

The hits, they just keep coming.

You missed Tasmania :P Although, it would be incredibly hilarious if it just didn't launch there as per this nice graphic.

ha!

Mainlanders: Oh hey we're getting the Xbox One.

Tasmaniac: Oh cool

Mainlanders: No... I said WE'RE getting Xbox One...

I bet those countries make up the vast majority of the 360 audience, still doesn't stop this from being crazy.

Plenty of people.

There are a huge number of countries not on that list that are quite well off. I currently work in Cyprus and own a PS3 besides a gaming PC. My little brother owns a 360 and he lives in Seychelles (an African tourist country). I have co workers who play console games as well. A console in eastern EU countries is a completely commonplace product that you go buy in an electronics/games section of any big store like anything else. It's not some over the top luxury or anything (tho it's not something people would also just throw away money at instantly either). There is also a very decent used games business for consoles and people borrowing and trading games with each other because people are pragmatic with their money.

A PC still costs money to buy initially, and anyone who can afford a decent PC can afford a console (even if the PC cost is recouped over time)

The thing that people are freaking out about a bit too much is that nowhere does it say you will not be able to play Xbone games in those countries period. Simply that Live is not "supported" there. The catch here is if you look at the current Live map for 360 users a lot of those countries are officially not supported now, and I know for a fact you can still play on Live even if you are in those unsupported countries (my brother used to play online on the 360 from Seychelles), as long as you create a Live account tied to a supported country it all works fine. Your Xbox will just automatically connect to the nearest Live server in another country anyway.

Unless they specifically start IP banning people from other countries. (which they haven't done for current Live unsupported countries). The: "supported X-box Live countries" list doesn't matter for shit.

Wow, so the Xbox One went from an expensive system to a system EXCLUSIVELY for the privileged in the west.

That makes the choice even simpler, yeah.

What's the big deal? This is only for the launch window. You'd have to be fucking crazy to buy the Xbox in that window anywhere. Give it a year at least, see how Microsoft's vision plays out. In the meantime, the PS4 and Wii will have more than enough game to tide you over until the Xbox is worth owning, if it ever is.

For the melodramatists, behold the 360 post launch release dates and countries:

It'd be nice to visit a fucking forum without reading about how hard the sky is falling.

People always say that, as if business is that predictable. But if companies could always just "do the math" and plan accordingly, bad business decisions wouldn't happen.

@fluxwavez said:

Map of where the Xbox One will and won't work at launch:

The hits, they just keep coming.

I know it means nothing but I find it kind of hilarious that Florida isn't colored in on that map.

@tennmuerti: Alright, that clears up a lot, actually. Consider me on the "eff microsoft" train.

@s0mah: This whole thread is crazy, don't be bringing "logic" and "reason" in here! I need an opportunity to use this image;

@s0mah said:

For the melodramatists, behold the 360 post launch release dates and countries:

It'd be nice to visit a fucking forum without reading about how hard the sky is falling.

These are not only the launch countries so you can buy one in these countries. These are the only countries this machine will work. And this is the huge difference. So if you are in some neighbor country and you want to buy a xbox one you will not be able to play the games on even if you have highspeed internet. . How can anyone seriously spin or think this is a good thing... This list is going for the richest countries in Europe without including smaller ones. Alone this should you give a perspective what Microsoft is thinking right now. This is past the arrogance Sony had back than with htier PS3 saying people want to have a second job to be able to buy one. Thi is just insanity in a very very dangerous way. Also this is nothing publishers forced them to do. That is their thinking.

Well. Multiplayer games will be more reliable?

@darji said:

I know its consolewars material but still. That is why region free is so great.

Yet nobody supports Antartica. Why do they have to spend their days throwing fish to killer whales? WHY?! The madness.

@darji: Just a minor note on that map. No official console sales will happen within the People's Republic Of China.
Grey sales yes (a rather large number all things considered) but no official ones.

As someone who lives in Central America I can tell you that a LOT of people have consoles, we also got some PCs but that shit gets way to expensive, so consoles are always the general place to go, but seeing how MS just said fuck you guys will all this, most people will probably go Sony, hell I think Nintendo has a shot to get more people thanks to this.

They actually can play their games. On PC and PS4. YAY!

Is a 1.5 mbps connection a strict requirement? I'm honestly curious.

it is required to work properly.

If you are in New Zealand and have a 1.5 MPS connection you are one of the lucky ones. New Zealand's broadband is garbage. Here standard broadband is around 1MPS depending on where you live and what time of day it is. If you can get fibre in your area that's normally 200 or so a month but is only available in and around the city's Microsoft is screwed here if people actually read the fine print before they buy.

@punkxblaze: brilliantly done

How can anyone possibly hate this guy, he's hilarious!

MS could burn his house down and he'd still find a way to thank and compliment them!

Yeah, I was gonna say. I don't know the current state of this NBN that's being instituted (what a shitshow trying to get this thing underway has been), but I do know it was supposed to take quite some time before it rolls out for everyone, or even almost everyone. I'm sure the major cities will get it first, but if you're in a smaller town or a rural area - from what I hear about connection speeds out there - you're probably fucked. Royally.

Also, if you're on a bandwidth cap here in Australia (as I am), you might be in trouble as well.

Speaking for myself, I think I usually get more that 1.5mbps, but not by a lot, and I don't think it takes very much for it to drop below.

When the Respawn guys were talking about "What if Titanfall takes off in Japan on Xbox One?" all I could think about was this thread.

It's pretty funny how Microsoft just keeps on piling shit on themselves.

Interesting. I'm just outside of London and have a connection of 500kb/s - 1.5mbps (My speeds rarely go over 1mbps). Currently I don't have a ton of trouble on XBL or PSN, but I'm wondering whether I'd even be able to play an Xbox One most of the time. I don't believe I'm a complete minority either, there are black spots all over this country where people can't get broadband and the situation isn't likely to get better soon as BT who have a monopoly on the UK's infrastructure are a joke. They've promised to fix my woeful connection 'in the coming months' for a good three years now, and as I said, I'm not alone in this.

1.5mb needed. For what? Just the authentication? I live in Australia, yo, and while my internet is higher tan that, it's not always consistent and can sometimes be super garbage. I don't know, man. This seems super crazy.

Didn't someone else say the PS3 and X360 both launched in different countries/continents gradually over the span of a year or two? So isn't this standard for console releases? Won't the PS4 do the same thing (minus the internet speed requirement)?

PC player here, so I don't know.

I believe Microsoft defines this to be "the proper (XBox One) experience" which who knows what that means. It could mean anything form "takes less than 5 minutes to download and patch" to "takes less than 5 minutes to deliver ads and media and ads and updates and ads".

Cloud processing, background downloads, etc.

The big difference is if I do go home one of these days and since they are only supporting those countries at launch, then I'm not gonna be getting an X-ONE. When I had my X360, I could connect to the US XBOX Live just fine when I was in my home country for college, and I was offline for the majority of the time I owned an X360 because my internet was incredibly shitty. Now that I'm back in the US I'm not entirely affected but there'll be a point that I'll to go back to my home country for a certain period of time (several months) and all of a sudden I can't play my games if I bought an X-ONE because my home country STILL doesn't have XBL EIGHT YEARS LATER and if I try to connect to the US XBL I might get IP blocked. This is just crazy.

EDIT: Hopefully, this isn't the case though and that I don't get IP blocked if I do connect to XBL. What does bother me is that I know people who do have XBL accounts that are registered in Japan or Taiwan, both countries currently not supported by XBOX One. For sure, those guys are probably going to pick up a PS4 in the next go around.

I assume this means "at launch" as in more countries will become available with time.

Of course but they still IP block you at that is the crime here.

Where is "here" and how is it a crime?

Europe. And how is this a crime? Do you believe it is ok to go A only after the richest countries even if the neighbor country is like 30 miles away? ALso tell me one device that has such draconian requirements? I honestly know none.

Isnt that also "Planned" at launch. They could add more. And I doubt they will not try to get more people in those areas.

@darji: Consoles since the NES have used region locking. This is basically very specific region locking as you're locking out specific countries - AT LAUNCH - instead of entire regions of the world, which is actually better in a way.

So I guess I can point you at an NES, at a Playstation, Playstation 2 etc

You NEED a HDtv too?! I know tons of people (college kids mostly) who play on their crappy small tvs.

A lot of the map stuff is no surprise, with the exception of countries like Iceland - they're not shipping the console at launch to countries in which they have not already performed well. It's basically admitting that they can't compete in those markets, but it probably makes sense by their accounting numbers. Many of them will likely still get the console some time after the launch window, much like various games have timed releases in different regions.

What seems nuts to me is the 1.5 mbps requirement. There are a ton of areas full of people in their target demographics, even in the US, which are not urban enough to have high speed internet service available to them. My parents live in a fairly well-developed town in the South that is just far enough outside a city that the best they are offered is overpriced DSL which only hits 1.5 at its maximum (which never happens). I have relatives in the midwest who are in very similar situations. And these are in towns full of families with high-school-aged children, who would use the TV features and play a lot of Halo and COD and whatever else... but that requirement basically shuts them out, simply because ISPs don't think it's worth it to support their areas with higher speeds.

I'm not even opposed to the idea of making a console/games with the basic expectation of broadband connection speeds; it has to happen at some point. But Microsoft are definitely doing it too soon. The infrastructure to support that simply does not exist yet, even in areas of their target countries that are wealthy and first-worldy enough.

@winternet: It means the other countries have to use a fake address and prepaid cards...

Given the always-online restriction of the new console, no one knows if that is going to be enough this time.

Has the IP blocking actually been confirmed?

@mandude said:

I don't think so, but here's a quote from Eurogamer:

A man called Robert Hallahan asked: "Does the Xbox One disclaimer imply you won't be able to authenticate a disc-based game if not in one of the 21 countries?"

Xbox Support worker Phil replied: "The Xbox One will only be available in the 21 launch countries."

Hallahan responded: "But say someone from Poland, not listed, imports it from the UK. Will they be able to play disc-based games?"

Phil answered: "They would want to wait until the console is available in their region."

More from Twitter: "You would need an account set up for an Xbox Live enabled region, here's some more info: http://xbx.lv/19q5Pgv " and "We do not currently support using an account from a region in which you do not reside."

Surly it cant require 1.5mbps that would just be insane, if its just me on the internet its at roughly 1.2, only the people i live with aren't just going to upgrade it 'cuz i wanna play video games on that xbox'.

This is going to be totally fun to watch play out in the next few years if they don't roll back on most of they're policys.

There is more to bussiness than just "Math" ethics and morals, do still matter. Money don't buy good will.

@chibithor: Yeah, it certainly doesn't look good, but maybe you could buy a Spanish Xbox and set up a Spanish account and still be able to play in Portugal. I think all the MS twitter responses say for certain is that MS can't officially condone or support these actions.

Either way, I'm sure it's a fucking death knell for Xbox One in those countries.

@video_game_king: Remember when Sony said "people can just get a second job to afford a ps3" well... "People can just move to another country to play xbox one!"

I am saddened by all this :(

@mandude: I went through some more tweets: "Games are tied to the region they are purchased in." "It is important that the region of the console, account and game match where you live".

And this exchange "How would u know if im in that region or not?According to XBL im in what ever region I put in my account registration. Correct?" "We cannot further speculate on what will or won't happen for an unsupported region"

You're right though, they're not explicitly saying 'IP block' and they're not going to give an official okay for going around their restrictions even if it's possible.

Looks like Florida and Maine won't either.......lol.

@chibithor: Aye, it's pretty dreadful regardless. And that's to say nothing of the people who already have Live accounts from ineligible countries. Best case scenario, they have to abandon their accounts.