OXM: Eight Xbox One myths addressed

[daredevil.shark]

drkohler said:

6. There are manufacturing problems

Look, here's a picture of an Xbox One fresh off the production line. You can add that to the below video of live human beings interacting with the console in our own offices, and to Microsoft's repeated assurances that it won't struggle to meet target shipments for Xbox One at launch. Rumours of the contrary arose following news of a release delay in certain regions, but Albert Penello says this is a problem of localisation that relates to the complexities of Kinect voice control, not production. "Everybody wants to assume there's a [units volume] issue," he told us in August. "And yet I'm showing real hardware here at Gamescom - a real, final, retail kit.

This one is a real hoot. The answer to manufacturing problems is "Here is a unit fresh off the production line". "Here is real hardware at Gamescon" (which happened weeks before launch...). As if this would prove anything at all.

How about answering two key questions:

1. Why did you cut your country list several times down to basically NA and GB?

2. Why did you buy so many wafers for your initial manufacturing run for the (two?) SoCs? This was reported by multiple industry insiders last december, commenting that 10'000 wafers were ordered with no less than three different manufacturers (the guess was GF, TSMC and a third one). Usually you need a few dozen working SoC for testing. Knowing the die size, why manufacture roughly 1.5mio chips if you have no yield problems? This argument alone reads like a fishing expedition (translation: hope that at least one of the foundries can get some chips to work).

Spot on.