Xbox One In Australia: ‘We’re Looking At The Nuances In Each Market…’

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.


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