Originally Posted by Groucho (Post 11812205)

I would say that releasing a week earlier than the PS4 is the perfect counterpoint to the price point difference.

Originally Posted by Groucho (Post 11812225)

Not joking around. There's a lot of people out there who are willing to pay a little premium to be "first on their block" with a new console.

Originally Posted by chuckd21 (Post 11812235)

This date is all based on one unconfirmed image from a Wal-Mart, yes?

Originally Posted by Groucho (Post 11812225)

Not joking around. There's a lot of people out there who are willing to pay a little premium to be "first on their block" with a new console.

Originally Posted by chuckd21 (Post 11812522)

Meanwhile the PS4 comes with ice cream and free back rubs.

Originally Posted by flashburn (Post 11812605)

Crappier yields due to them increasing the clock rates leading to a lower launch supply than planned?! Color me shocked!

Originally Posted by Albert Panello

Wow. My grip on truthfulness was that tenuous?

Perhaps, it could be taken at face value that we are telling the truth. I haven’t been up here posting spin or BS. I’ve been pushing hard to be transparent in how we talk about what’s going on with the platform. And I’m clear when I can’t comment on things.

Yet, somehow since this truth doesn’t jibe with the popular belief online, we are being dishonest. I get that we’ve had a rough few months, but at some point I’d like to think we get the benefit of the doubt, at least on things that make sense logically. You know, Occam’s Razor and such.

Here’s truth:

There never has been any sort of yield or performance issues with our GPU/ESRAM/KINECT/ETC. It’s simply not true, and I’ve heard the rumors online so often I actually went to the silicon engineers to ask them again. Our HW program (knock-on-wood) has been on schedule and again, we’ve had the opportunity to increase performance even later in the program. You don’t have yield issues then upgrade the clock speed by 6%. Again, simple logic here.

Second, if we were having yield issues – why did our country delay not include markets like the US, Canada, or UK? Those represent the vast majority of our volumes. Anyone can look at GFK Chart-Track and see the volumes in the regions that slipped. Here’s an assignment for the GAF Detectives: go look at historical sell-thru rates of consoles by region, then tell me what percentage of global consoles sales were represented by those affected markets. (hint: it’s a small percentage). Each and every region is important to us, don’t get me wrong, but anyone can look at those numbers and deduce it has nothing to do with volume.

I’m going to state it again, just like I said here and to OXM: The delay was localization related. Besides needing local language support, we also need to prop-up local Live, Apps, a Marketplace, and a variety of other services. We bundle that together as “localization” in messaging, but there is more to shipping in a region then text and voice translation. The offset to that, like we’ve said, X1 is region free and while that’s slightly more inconvenient, it will still allow people in the local countries to enjoy launch. Again, not something we’d be promoting if we were having issues with volume.

I’m certainly not going to change everyone’s mind, I get that. And I know there is tendency to believe there are many more diabolical things going on behind the scenes. In this case, we are being fully transparent. And FYI – we passed FCC certification back in early summer, before PS4.

Lastly – anything that was shown on a box, was shown on near-final retail HW. Our Dev Kits and Retail Units are the same.

Albert “spoonful of sugar” Penello

Originally Posted by Albert Panello

Like I said. The truth of launch will put this to rest. There would be no benefit to me entering this thread unless I was confident it could be proven beyond my own word.

The continuous propagation of the same rumor does not make it a new rumor. The China news thing is wrong, of course, like the other rumors are wrong. They have no source. It’s just the same rumor making the rounds.

My source = me. That’s all I can rely on, my knowledge of what’s going on internally.

Now, you could call me a BIASED source, but short of me showing documents or email strings or other evidence that of course I could never disclose, it’s basically my word against the rumors. And even if I did show something, it would be dismissed.

At any rate, I will continue to post as long as I’m welcome.

Originally Posted by fumanstan (Post 11812619)

Originally Posted by chess (Post 11812644)

I don't really know what to believe at this point. Until today, I thought they had yield issues, but I find the above to be fairly credible. It's also good to hear him assert FCC certification.

Whatever...just hope you guys get your consoles ASAP.

Originally Posted by flashburn (Post 11812696)

I'm sure PS4 has similar yields. Actually PS4 yields are probably lower since it's a bigger chip.