Interestingly, the biggest concern over here in germany actually appears to be the "always kinected" rumor. Even many mainstream media have published articles about the 1984/big brother scenario this would create.

A camera right in the middle of your living room, capable of seeing even in perfect darkness, a microphone that's constantly activated und surveilling, and all that connected to a black box completetly under Microsoft's control that will in practice be always on and always online - I can easily see why many people find this scenario quite scary.

The second big criticism at least in mainstream media appears to be that all these new TV features the Xbox One has are rather pointless over here. Most of the online video services will once again only be usable in the USA, and the ability to connect TV decoders is useless because in Europe these are usually already built into the TVs.

So people should only utter complaints that are relevant to US customers? Xbox One's disadvantages won't disappear by simply downplaying them. There are 190 other countries in the world.

They can discuss US only features at a US news conference. I never said they couldn't.

However you must surely concede it makes the XBOX ONE look half baked to all outside America.

Unless it's Microsofs intention to target the US only. Then I totally get it.

It is just that....how do you expect them to handle it differently....the console has US specific features and the conference is based in the US. Should they just not say it at all because it will upset the other countries? Is this about being politically correct? Please tell me how they should properly announce US specific features at a US conference without upsetting other countries fans. 

I think it's more the fact we probably won't be getting the features but will still have to pay for them.

This in turn will make XBOX ONE a unattractive purchase in terms of cost vs features.

Im annoyed becuse I wanted MS to do well in Europe. The path they have chosen makes that very difficult indeed !

I'm looking forward to the Xbox One, if MS changes the policy on used games.

Haters gonna hate

I think X1 looks baller

That "US-based conference" point just doesn't convince me. It's true that this 1-hour-show happened on US territory, but in practice that doesn't matter because the actual audience was worldwide. The audience right in the room may have been mostly americans, but those were just a few hundred, while thousands or maybe even millions of people from all over the world had been looking forward to that event and watched it via the Internet.

Now it's okay that a console offers features that are not available worldwide. But Microsoft was well aware of the fact that the audience was as international as it could be, and still, they were showing pretty much only features that were relevant to US customers. I just don't believe it would have been much different if the conference was on, say, Japanese territory. I think it was more of a fundamental problem: They simply didn't have many great new features to show that would make the international fans excited.

I fully expect you to express disapointment that the Tokyo Game show will lack Western content in comparison to Eastern content. Because even though its Japanese centric, it totz has a global audience.

Nm, just seems that there is always a negative side to anything any company says nowadays.

This wasn't solely a US event though. It's not like E3 where it's somewhat US-centric or TGS for Japan or EuroGamer for UK/EU. This was their big international console reveal and most of the features they touted were limited to a single region. This was Microsoft's event to the whole world.

Personally, I expect some US specific features but a large portion of the (international) event was devoted to a single region.