Krakn3Dfx

From a post by Albert Penello (Higher up in the Xbox Division) on Neogaf:

First, people should understand – I don’t always know every detail happening with the program. Even though I run Product Planning (I'm not in PR!), that means we set the stage early for the features and HW, but a lot happens going through the development process. I stay very close as we approach launch, but I don’t always know the specifics when things change, so sometimes (frequently) I have to ask someone on the team. I also don’t run PR or Marketing, so I don’t see every piece of material that makes it to the public. In this case, there was an inconsistency between some small print on Xbox.com, and what I understood was happening – so I went to get more details.

Turns out the answer to this question is… complicated. It’s been an education for me as I’ve been looking into it.

There is no way that I could do justice to it in a post, so the marketing team is working on a chart that gives clarity on what locales, languages, and voice features are available in each country. Trying to write it down would be confusing. Stay tuned for a more detailed explanation, but just to give clarity:

In November

- We will launch in 13 geos

- 10 of those geos will support some voice features

- We support 8 languages

The 8 Languages at Launch are:

1) English – US

2) English – GB (WW)

3) French

4) Spanish – MX

5) Spanish – ES

6) Italian

7) German

8) Portuguese

NOW – the nuance to this is that some voice *features* won’t be available in all countries right away. “Xbox On”, for instance, is only available in 5 (hence the confusion on Xbox.com in the small print).

BigDug13

– the FAQ is correct, for launch. When you choose a language for your console, you will be offered the list of countries it is supported in. Using your example, if you choose Italy as your language, you only get Italian. We will continue to add more supported combinations over time. For example in Canada we will support English and French. The opportunity to “mix-and-match” languages and countries is something we’re looking to do post-launch.

Again, sorry for all the confusion on this. Look for a more detailed explanation coming. Will most likely come through Xbox Wire, or Xbox.com.

Some things I expect to see for free for Plus users within the first 6-8 months:

- Knack

- Killzone: SF Single Player campaign

- Flower HD

- Doki Doki Universe

- Free specific PS1/2/3 titles through Gaikai once it launches

- Several other indie titles

We definitely won't see the wealth of free games we're seeing now on the PS3, and no one should expect to.

I don't want to tangent off too much, but this argument still doesn't hold any water given how much Sony is putting outside of their paywall vs. XBLG (everything except MP in non-F2P games and free/discounted games) as opposed to how much is being walled behind XBLG (everything except store access and single player games). Over 2 million people have been paying for PS+ on the PS3/Vita entirely for the IGC and bigger discounts.

Make a list of what you get with PS+ vs XBLG, and then another list of what you can do without PS+ vs. XBLG, and this argument that people were upset about it with Gold and are fine with it with PS+ is pretty shortsighted and nothing more than an inaccurate talking point.

The idea of this sounds great, I think it's inevitable that it'll happen, I'm just curious to see what the seller's cut is going to end up looking on these types of things. It'll go without saying the publisher and console maker will want a cut of the profits, so at some point it just becomes pointless if you're taking too much of a hit on already too little in value.

Guess we'll see how it plays out.

New fact sheet up from MS (very bottom in small print)

"Xbox voice commands will not be available in all markets on the product release date. Voice commands will be available at launch in US, UK, CA, FR, and DE."

Kind of weird, voice localization was their original reason for scaling back to a 13 country launch. Wonder how quickly they'll roll it out to the other 8 countries after launch.

I don't think Microsoft is going to bail themselves out at a chip developer conference, they'll drop a few phrases to get their base riled up, but 90% of what they talk about will be pretty dry. The facts are ESRAM and DDR3 are not used in a system designed to make use of a hUMA based architecture, even AMD has said that much. Meanwhile the upcoming Kaveri APU from AMD is designed with GDDR5 and hUMA in mind, so it's hardly a stretch to think the APU in the PS4 alongside GDDR5 would support the it.

http://gamingio.com/2013/04/amd-to-bring-gddr5-unified-memory-architecture-for-cpuapus-as-cost-lowers/

Carmack said that alongside the fact that he hasn't benchmarked the systems at all. AMD retracted the statement to get out from under MS because it was made outside of NDA agreements. I said in my post the XBO may have something similar, but it won't fully support the hUMA spec because announced system specs don't meet the requirements.

Also, Sony joined the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation originally co-founded by AMD while Microsoft has not.

According to AMD's own words it will, but it's also possible Xbox One has something similar to hUMA, although not the same, since the system's stated specs don't meet the requirements for hUMA utilization.

PS4 has a leg up in a lot of areas technically, so something like this would only add to that gap.