No one seems to be talking about the fact that - besides some less than assuring assurances that they still care - Microsoft has pretty much pulled out of the console race outside of Europe and North America. Excuse me whilst I rambling remedy this:

In South Korea - where I happen to reside - the PS4 has recently moved up its release date to December from March. The X1 is still tentatively scheduled for November of next year. It's the same story throughout most of Asia: PS4 sometime in the next few months, Xbox One sometime next year. "We'll announce dates when we know them." - Microsoft [paraphrased]. Guess which next-gen console most gamers in Asia are planning on buying.

Microsoft's decision to turn their console into a set-top box and to release so much later has left their admittedly already-small, far-east patrons in the shithouse. I'm in a respectably large Facebook group of gamers in South Korea - who are split about 50/50 Xbox/PS - and most of the Xbox owners are talking jumping ship to PS this generation. And we're mostly expats, the situation is even worse among actual Korean Xbox 360 owners.

Before everyone jumps in and starts talking about how the market is too small for Microsoft to worry about, lets examine some trends:

• Most Hollywood blockbusters these days make two, three, four times as much money overseas than they do at home. Movies that used to come here months after their North American release are now coming here sometimes even before they premier in the west.
• Triple-A titles' budgets continue to grow, rival and even surpass that of the blockbusteriest of Hollywood blockbusters and practically require that a game sell multiple-millions to be a success.
• This looks to be the first generation that potentially, legitimately makes it into an increasingly-rich China - at least in some small capacity - due some new weird laws I'm not entirely clear on. Not to mention the fact that all of the consoles are physically made there.
• Short of sports games that run into licensing problems and are sports that Asians don't care about (football, hockey,) in the last couple of years, I can't think of a big-budget console game for Xbox 360/PS3 that didn't come to Korea on or around the NA release. Hell, some even got localized. I played through the entirety of Saints Row the Third with Korean text. (It was possibly even more hilarious. Tiger Escort only ever gets described in text, I had NO IDEA what was going on.)
• The big-name game publishers are at least already on board.

I can't help but think that shafting the Asian market like this is an incredibly short-sighted move on Microsoft's part (as indeed has been much of the "XBone's" release.) I would think it would be in their best interest to try and grab some new customers and try to attract some overseas developers while they're there for the taking instead of letting Sony run away with them.

Addendum: this clusterfuck of a post was interrupted by no less than three disruptions in my writing including a two hour meeting I forgot about. Apologies for inconsistencies and incoherency.