Here's a nice tale of "he said, she said," with Microsoft trying to stave off rumors that the console's recently announced delayed arrival to European countries is related to a localization issue, NOT a manufacturing or production shortage.
It begins with China's Economic Daily News reporting that the Cupertino boys' delay was the result of production issues, specifically, "due to the lens, optical drive and assembly of low yield, resulting in supply chain shipments ring true."
As a result, "internal Microsoft Xbox One year has been revised down to 6.2 million units shipped, under the revised rate of over 10%, dragged down the supply chain operational performance of fear."
Whether it's a translation error or lackluster reporting, the EDN writer doesn't mention the source of the rumors, only "recent legal circles."
As we saw with the Ouya, production issues usually result in a significantly longer delay than both consumers and developers would like, so Microsoft was quick to put the kaibosh on the idea that the delay was due to a manufacturing or producing issue.
Microsoft's own Director of Programming, Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb, called the story "completely untrue" on Twitter, but has yet to elaborate. Microsoft's head of product development, Albert Penello, was a bit more forthcoming with details, telling OXM that the delay is actually a technical one, specifically, localizing the console's Kinect voice control features:
"People assume there's a volume issue which in fact there isn't. You're actually seeing pre-orders pop back up now because we're able allocate the countries' volumes back in. It's there, the problem is localisation. And once people see the system and how integral it is, it's not just text integration."
"But at the same time we said, this is a region-free console. In regions like Switzerland where people speak German and French, they can get a German or French console. It'll work fine. They can log in to their marketplace, use their language, we don't geo-fence Live or any of the content any more. We don't have official language support - but the console still works."
Microsoft still has yet to provide an official release date for the console, but is expected to arrive some time in November.
