In the wake of the Xbox One announcement earlier this morning, we spoke to Adam Pollington, Marketing Manager at Microsoft Australia in an attempt to get more information about the local launch of Microsoft’s new console.
But at this stage it appears as though Microsoft is keeping its cards relatively close to its chest.
Today we revealed that Live TV, arguably the major focus of Microsoft’s reveal, will not be available outside of the US at launch. According to Pollington, Microsoft want to look at the differences in each market before committing.
“We haven’t announced any specifics yet, but the plan is to roll out Live TV in different territories,” he explained. “With Live TV we’re looking at the nuances of each market.”
Pollington couldn’t confirm who they would be working with or any specific timeframe regarding Live TV.
Similarly, it was difficult to pin Pollington down on a price or a release date. He would only state that they “will have details soon” and that Xbox One will be released in all major territories by the end of this year. We’re assuming (hoping) that includes Australia.
Sony has been increasingly proactive with local developers here in Australia — Sydney based studio Nnooo, for example, has confirmed it will be working on games for the PlayStation 4. We asked if Microsoft had organised any partnerships with local developers.
Again, Microsoft has nothing to announce.
“We don’t have any details to release at the moment with regards to local developers,” Pollington explained, “but if you look at what we did with Xbox LIVE Arcade and Xbox LIVE Indie Games, we’ll be looking to go down that same path.”
Xbox LIVE Indie games is notorious by its absence in Australia; issues with classification makes things difficult. But according to Pollington, attempting to fix the Xbox LIVE Indie Games problem in Australia is “tabled for discussion”.
So, very light on actual details. No price, no release date, no timing information. A little disappointing.
Comments
36 responses to “Xbox One In Australia: ‘We’re Looking At The Nuances In Each Market…’”
“So, very light on actual details. No price, no release date, no timing information. A little disappointing.”
How very… well…. Microsoft of them :oP
At least they showed the console >_
Yeah, they showed the box like Sony didn’t… and there were women in their presentation!
Bt it’s kinda like they saw that Sony served us all a great big meatball sub but skimped on the sauce and didn’t use that bread we like that has the herbs sprinkled on top.
So they served us a turd sandwhich, but we’re all supposed to give them points because they served it with heaps of extra sauce AND those herbs sprinkled on top that we like.
This is the best food analogy I have ever seen in a tech discussion.
Wow… what a massive load of bullshit!!
“With Live TV we’re looking at the nuances of each market.”
Wouldn’t that be part of the requirements and design phase for a new product? The part of the development lifecycle where you decide what you want the device to do and how.
This approach is like Ford building a car for a global market but only making it left hand drive cos they’ll look at what side of the road different countries drive on afterwards.
that’s a bit of an exaggeration, you can still use the Xbox One, just not one of it’s features. Your comparison would be like them releasing the Xbox without a 240v plug.
no Xbox TV is more like releasing the Ford Focus without SYNC (their phone voice control thingoe)
which Ford did.. and funnily enough, SYNC is made by Microsoft.
Might be a fair point, except for the sheer amount of time they spent talking up that one feature as a major selling point. Strip that away, and we have next to no details on the console and very little reason to be excited.
Actually that comparison is completely incorrect.
They are touting the TV features as one of the major features of the new console, so much so that it took up at least half of the announcement. They really made it feel like it is half set top box. THEN they tell us on the side that it won’t actually release with that capability out of the box. That is a complete and utter fail.
you probably weren’t there when Ford was touting SYNC as the next big thing in in-car entertainment and safety huh
So about as much information as what we knew about the PS4 when it was first announced, right?
No wait, we know what the console looks like and we have a general idea on how used games work.
BTW, they’re going to be talking about developing games for the Xbox One at the BUILD conference next month.
PS4.
A good number of games shown off, the totally redesigned controller, the social integration, video sharing functionality, improved multiplayer capabilities, cloud gaming, background downloads/updates, near-complete list of specs, approximate release date, etc etc
In fact, they showed basically everything EXCEPT the box. Now we just have more games, the price, and the exact release date to hear about. As well as some other relatively minor functions, like used games.
Isnt Live TV essentially what PlayTV is for PS3 right now?
If i understand correctly, Live TV is just for FTA, right? The “cable” and “IPTV” sections of the box are in-built? (not that you need to inbuild a section for IPTV, you just need the right widget)
Yep – It seems to be the same feature ps3 has had for 7 years.
I don’t know why they bothered – once people catch onto the new Valve Box the traditional console market is dead.
None of these new releases will matter in 12 months as they are only 3-4 months away from being irrelevant, obsolete technology.
Wow. That is one of the funniest comments I’ve seen so far. You sire, have absolutely no idea what your talking about.
Good of you to call him sire.
I think Australia always presents a dilemma for Microsoft. We’re too small and localised a market to focus on and remain profitable, but we’re just big and vocal enough that our displeasure and outrage at that lack of focus is noticeable at a global level.
On the other hand, I wonder if there’s an assumption that Australians are so used to this treatment, and that we have become tech savvy enough, that we work around these problems by figuring out how to pretend to be Americans.
And then we cheerfully pay digital retail prices (which are basically publisher profit + US retailer mark-up + australian retailer markup again), which kind of proves that most of us really are incredibly stupid and non-savvy. They do it because we let them get away with it, and until the MAJORITY of the country is grey-importing and using lesser-known digital key-sellers and proxy servers to pretend to be Americans, they’ll continue to do it.
i don’t understand why there is an issue with live TV. Microsoft have had the brilliant media center program in windows for ages that until recently was still the best DVR software around.
allow us to add USB tv tuners and everything is fine.
a hdmi in at the very least means that its not a dvr its a repeater. you will likely need a device with ethernet over hdmi in order to get any control of that tuner device.
i find it funny that apparently games were not emphasized but TV that was is so incomplete
it looks like its just a pc. i agree usb tuners should work.
They might use HDMI CEC to control the set top box. There is a better chance of that being supported than some kind of standard Ethernet control protocol.
God I hope not, I haven’t found a stand alone freeview box that changes channels fast enough to keep me happy. It’s the only reason I use PlayTV right now. Pass through means you still have to rely on the quality of your original tuner.
Region restrictions on internet services. One of the greatest ironies of this age.
BINGO.
“… the plan is to roll out Live TV in different territories…”
“With Live TV we’re looking at the nuances of each market.”
My money is on he’s referring to region locking online content and price points for that content in each territory.
Coupled with an online check every 24 hours that breaks single player content if it’s not done, this console is off the cards for me. Given I’m not much of a fan of Sony’s business practices either, this means I’ll be heading back to PC for my gaming fix I guess.
THIS!
BECAUSE I REALLY NEED TV to play video games. Oh man why did I bother to wake up at 3am for this.
The whole Live TV thing strikes me as Microsoft preparing to make the same mistake Nintendo has made with their Nintendo TVii service, which to my knowledge, despite being advertised as an integral part of the Wii U, is yet to be implemented outside of the United States and Japan. I hate to say this but I feel that we may end up waiting just as long for the Xbox One’s Live TV service down here than we have been for Nintendo TVii functionality, and by that I mean it will most likely never be released down here.
As for the people bringing up the fact Sony didn’t reveal their console at their reveal, I understand it might have been a bizarre choice, but it’s obvious they wanted to hold something off to reveal at E3, and after this morning’s fiasco, all eyes are going to be on Sony come E3.
Sony also now have the design advantage.
They know what they have to beat cosmetically and can have a better looking product than micro&soft at release.
This xbox announcement would have made Sony much happier than the micro&soft fanbois as it showed them they are on a winner when compared to xbox’s ripoff ‘pay extra $$$ for everything you get for free on other systems’ policy.
Only microsoft sell multiplayer games that are not really multiplayer.
The game boxes should state:
‘Only multiplayer if you let us charge you again to play what you have already paid for.’
or
‘Multiplayer upon payment of fees and then next year maybe it won’t be multiplayer again cause we’ll turn the servers off and lie saying no one played it all while still selling this game at retail as multiplayer’
Fools and their money are easily parted but to pay a live subscription for what is free on all other systems makes you much dumber than a mere fool.
So to sum up all the articles about the Xbox One today in one headline:
“Microsoft jumps the shark with Xbox One”
They’re waiting to see how bad the LNP fucks up the NBN before bothering with us.
Could be the main reason. Without the labor NBN HD streaming services will never take off here. If I was the person making decisions for any corporate IT companies I would only offer the most basic of services to Australia, until knowing who has won the election in September. Simply couldnt take the financial risk for the tiny reward (comparative to profit) that the Australian market gives back.
Here is an article about a video game company not being very good at their job.
WHAT A GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE VAGUE BITCHY COMMENTS ABOUT UNRELATED POLITICAL SHIT THAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND!
I am quite familiar with the difference between up to 100mb/s and at least 1gb/s. i also know the differences between gigabytes and terabytes.
It was the generic politicking that I was complaining about. This is a conversation about the Xbox One, not how you hate the various political parties of Australia and how they can’t do anything right and how they are staffed by liars and cheats and arseholes who couldn’t organise a party in a brewery and etc.
We get enough vague, generic, dog-whistle politics designed to tribalise and trivialise serious issues in everyday life without it bleeding into things like what kind of game system I like to push buttons on.
Only in the US?
Retards
I love my xbox 360, and I enjoyed having a ps3 back when they first came out. Loved the original xbox and the ps2, and loved the ps1.
From this news though, they’ve basically made a proprietary media PC. Looks like if you want a game console… for say… gaming? PS4 or Wii-U looks like the proper contenders. Maybe not in the first few years, but in 2-3-4 years the PS4s graphics will end up looking superior as MS as stated they didn’t put the best graphics they could into the xbox one.
Nintendo have always lagged behind since they made the n64 (their only true competitor to the playstation)
Pretty disappointing. I guess since a lot of PC games give controller support, might just stick with PC again until something actually different comes out (although, no split-screen grrrr).
how Long will it take? Well The 360 Still doesn’t support most of it’s US services here in australia does it?