Too early to tell. Anyone of these games can a masterpiece or a masterpiece of shit.

There have been a lot of articles talking about Balmer and some other executives basically running the company into the ground because of their arrogance.

.......Who was the idiots who let this, or any of this, happen? Seriously what are they thinking.

Region locking of games is bad enough, but now we have this. Out right making the console not work at all if you connect from an IP of a "non approved" country.

This has to easily be the worst, or maybe best, of the third console curses.

Third Console Curse...never heard of that word?

Holy fuck. I tune in to the stream, see what looks like a FPS Plants vs Zombies game, and think "what the fuck".

Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. I didn't even know this one was in the works. Looks awesome.

The way I understood it is somehow every major console manufacturer manages to have at least one big screw up with their third consoles

Nintendo 64 - Ended up losing most of their major 3rd party series from the higher cost and reduced space of sticking with carts. The system was also complex to program for compared to the Playstation.

Sega Saturn - Cost Sega a bunch of money and was the primary cause of them having to quit in the Dreamcast years. System was also hard to program for.

Playstation 3 - The reliance on The Cell cost the company all of the money they made in the PS1/2 years. Cause them to launch at $599. For years the PS3 had worse 3rd party ports most of the time because of being harder to program for.

now it continues with Xbox One having one major screw up after another.

Ther reason they stayed with Cartridges is because CDs are more susceptible to Piracy which apperantly was all the rage back than, strange that Sony was not bothered by CD piracy back than, same goes for PC.

Seems they don't care: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124848-Xbox-One-DRM-Wont-Deter-Witcher-3-Studio

Besides, it's not a launch title, it won't be out until we're well into 2014 and by then MS would have probably expanded its markets.
Well, that's partly true, they we're probably greatly influenced by all the money they'd make from licensing the format (is that the correct term?) to anyone who wanted to make a game for the system. They did it on the SNES and the Gamecube too, remember those little discs?

Hmmmm, so games will be actually country-locked instead of region-locked? If this is the case, it's much worse than i had imagined. At least in previous region-locked consoles (such as the Wii U and the 3DS) there were 3 mains regions: NTSC/US, PAL (Europe) and NTSC/J, and you could still import games within the same region. I can play US games on my Wii U and my 3DS without any issue. Will that be impossible on the Xbox One? Will i be limited to the games released specifically in my country? Shit, this sucks.
To be honest it would make much more sense if they released The Witcher 3 on the PS4 as well. A company that relies so much in DRM-free releasing their game in a DRM infested console and not in a DRM-free one doesn't make any sense to me, especially considering that both have a very similar hardware.

I think it's 2 different things. Region blocking works as usual but in addition to that games can't be activated if your country is not supported. Since XBone requires every game to be activated you won't be able to play games if you live in an unsupported country even if your console and disk were bought in a supported country. Unless they let you choose any country and don't block using your IP address.

I thought it was announced for both?

And I don't get questioning them releasing on XBONE. They release on Steam too. The customer chooses how much they care about DRM (and sadly they usually choose "not at all').

Some awesome guy in their Entertainment division.

I still have my Xbox account locked to the UK, and whenever I try to switch countries, I get a stupid "Something went wrong" message without any other info.

Well, sony has done thier PR kung fu they so lost in the years of the ps3, to big success. They have word of mouth, gamers, gaming 'journalists', the media and the ever increasing amount of goodwill on their side.

I respect MS, win7 is great and I love the UI, MS office is my de facto productivity software, and whilst being an android enthusiast, WP8 is a beautiful, innovative OS that I enjoyed demoing, even if it REALLY needs a kick up the arse when it comes to traction in markets.

But the Xbone is just one fuck up after the other. I shudder to imagine the impact all those convoluted restrictions it will have on the average joe. I do hope the MS if the Gates era come back in time to save the xbox, because at the moment, it really looks like it will hurt ALL of MS bottomline, and public image.

They lost out in the iphone era, they are losing in the tablet era, they must not lose out in the new console era.

I'm going to be a pc....and PS4 owner. It represents what console gaming should be and how simple it can be.