3969

Yeah, the PS3 was actually a reasonably cheap and capable Blu-Ray player when it launched. I would say that some of the early sales can be attributed to that.
But my guess is that most of the sales in northern EU was due to brand name. PS3 was the successor to the wildly successful PS2. Most people didn’t need to know more.

3970

In Europe, it was definitely brand name. Outside UK, this is Sonyland. Which is ironic, considering Sony often treats Europeans as 2nd class citizens…

3971

Indeed. Its interesting (to me at least) that before the PS3 launched, I had no interest whatsoever in consoles, and considered it a machine for children, where I had my pc for my manly man adult games. The PS3 launched with a competitive Blu-Ray player in respect to pricing, which is what got me interested in it. I really wanted a blu-ray player, and at the time, they were prohibitively expensive as stand-alones in Denmark, and this one promised continuous updates as well. It was actually a bit of a no-brainer. The games part wasn’t that interesting to me, which is also why I never considered an Xbox before before.

3972

Just resell it if you change your mind. It’s practically free money these days.

3973

Microsoft’s Albert Penello posted about this. http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2013/08/30/only-five-countries-will-be-able-to-fully-talk-to-their-xbox-ones-at-launch/

10 countries will have some voice commands, with only the five listed having the “full” planned functionality. They’re going to put out a chart (another one!) that may explain it better.

And yeah, I’d say that touting voice commands as a large part of the value proposition and then putting out fine print like that is kind of a shit move.

3974

We can work with that.

Xbone Kinect: Kind of a shit move.

3975

Wasted effort on DE.
Should have gone for Spanish instead covering Mexico and the Latino population in the US.
Germany was and still is PC country first and foremost and I can’t see that changing due to Xbone any time soon.
Most console fans will go for PS4 here.

3976

Random Post!.

Theres a open source voice recognition software: CMUSphinx

Heres a list of Acoustic and Language Models
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmusphinx/files/Acoustic%20and%20Language%20Models/

The spanish one have 2812 downloads, the german one have 1683 downloads. Spanish is more popular, but not by much.

Here is a tutorial to create a new Acousting Language Model:

The recipe ask for this:
1 hour of recording for command and control for single speaker
5 hour of recordings of 200 speakers for command and control for many speakers
10 hours of recordings for single speaker dictation
50 hours of recordings of 200 speakers for many speakers dictation

The hard part seems getting 200 friends to read the random control text.

Heres is a paper of some dudes doing is for the spanish language
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.61.8971&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Never heard the word “Utterance” before :D

I am posting this for no reason whatsoever.

postdata:
Something funny that Microsoft don’t know: You can be in USA, and want to talk in german, or you can be in france, and talk in spanish, or in australia, and portuguesse. There are many countries where 50% of the gamers talk a different language than the default. Language != Country.

3977

Who are these Europeans who were waiting with bated breath to talk to their Xboxes? You guys are talking about this as if the Xbox One was even more fucked because of this, as if that were even possible. I propose that the people who had already decided they didn’t want an Xbox are very likely feeling validated in their decision, while those who decided maybe they do want an XB1 probably did so for other reasons. I do recognize that there is a fair contingent of funny-talkin’ you-rows around here, is this the last straw for any of you? Or to ask my question a different way: who wouldn’t unplug their Kinect given the chance?

3978

I think the amount of people that really care about voice commanding their XBONEs is pretty small. I know I don’t give a shit. I suppose there are some nuts that are really looking forward to telling their console to change the channel or whatever.

That doesn’t change the fact that this is another instance of Microsoft screwing up the messaging for this console. One of their big selling points has been how awesome it’s going to be to talk to your console (powered by the cloud) and tell it to serve you all the entertainment you want at any time. No more fumbling around! Kinect will listen to you and know what you want! The fact that less than half of the launch territories will actually be able to fully use that feature is kind of important. They said the feature is a big deal, so the fine print is a big deal. You don’t get to claim the feature is worth a $100 premium, then act like it’s not a big deal when it doesn’t work in many countries.

3979

There’s a pretty tiny minority who were looking forward to the voice controls, but the issue isn’t so much a loss of value as it is Microsoft being retarded. They already know that most people hate the Kinect – they had to make it unpluggable for that reason – but if, at launch, you can’t even use the features they say you should be able to, why would you even bother trying?

Pretty much this exactly. If you are charging so much more than the competition specifically because of a mass-publicized hardware feature, you better make sure it damn well works everywhere before you release it.

3980

I take it as given that this is a goof for MS, I just really don’t know why anyone cares. It’s one more line item in a pretty long list of missteps, and not even a very interesting or damning one. OK, this is the thread where we keep an eye on that kind of thing, and maybe I just don’t have the capacity for outrage or face palmitude to properly appreciate this. I mean, tell me they’re doubling the price of Xbox Live or making the next Crackdown a Kinect game and I could see getting upset. Kinect won’t listen to me? Who was going to spend a hundred dollar premium on that?

3981

Apparently gamers in six of the launch territories will be doing exactly that if they buy an Xbox One.

3982

I find… laughable that Microsoft hyped features just don’t work half the countries they released. After they reduced the number of countries to half already. 5 is not a big number.

crap

Nobody inside this circle is getting a Xbox One.

uoW4dch.jpg800×489

3983

Well that’s kind of the rub, isn’t it? Plus, we’re talking as if the Kinect is the only reason to buy an XB1. I assure if, if I do actually buy one, it won’t be for that reason. I doubt I’m the only one.

3984

No, I am pretty sure they would know the exact breakdown of language settings versus geolocation of Live-connected 360s, and, more generally, of language usage in things like Windows and Office. 50% is a pretty bold claim to make, if you think about the sheer numbers involved.

3985

How do you justify being forced to buy a Kinect when they are telling you upfront it won’t even work for you?

This hasn’t “the Kinect such so much it doesn’t work.” It just plain doesn’t work.

These issues would be non issues if Microsoft did the right thing and made the useless Kinect optional.

3986

But wait, you can still wiggle your fingers and jump up and down at your Kinect, you just can’t talk to it. That’s got to be worth at least fifty bucks right?

3987

Yeah, about that much. :P

That’s a fair point, though; Voice Recognition is only a portion of the functionality of the Kinect, though it does eliminate a lot of the expected features. (For instance, you can’t use voice commands to turn on your console if it can’t recognize your voice. But you can definitely play that copy of Star Wars Kinect you have!) I guess we shouldn’t blow it too out of proportion but it is another sour pill to swallow following the long list of failures that Microsoft has shown in this launch campaign.

3988

It is not a valid point unless you love gimmick games. If you love these games, good for, Microsoft hurt everyone else to give a sight increase in the number of these games you will see.

Nobody, not die-hard loyalists and not Microsoft, has been able to imagine a situation where the Kinect is useful in a non gimmick game.

Voice recognition was the one thing the xbox army touted as justifying the Kinect.