Remember the rumors that they were having problems with eSRAM yield?

Looking more and more likely. Get it out to important markets first, launch it elsewhere when problem are sorted.

it would have bombed in japan anyways

It's like Microsoft felt they sold to many console this gen so they are abandoning a good portion of their user base

HAHAH totally true !!

As it's region locked, this got high odds of veracity.

So I'm confused now... X1 won't work in any other country at launch? O_o Or is it only that there will be no official release?

I think they are referring to an official release. If you put the console as you live in the U.S you should have all the features. I'm used to that because my country doesn't supports anything in terms of videogames, so I'm used to always put my consoles as I lived in the U.S.

Granted this should only be the case for small countries like mine.

equivalent to a child abandoning his mother after she threw him in a dumpster

That seems overly dumb on top of all the other bad news and restrictions we've been bombarded with lately, are they even trying this time around? It's almost like they're not willing to make an effort at all outside of the US and UK, they need a big market and broad market to do well.

But.. how will they survive without those 200k Japanese sales per year?

Yes! Brazil indahouuseee.
Oh, wait, I don´t want a Xbox One anymore. =/