What I got out of this
Greetings from the land of beer & bratwurst & weird porn (in Germany because of Gamescom?). Got here a little while ago and tired so I'm dropping this early. Then I'll go to bed, visit some churches (Kölner Dom), friends, Rheinpark, work meetings stuff and then I'm going to see how the gamefloor is later this week.
#Truthfact No.1
No live stream for the Xbox One Gamescom press conference for real reasons. Xbox One architecture is still not fully completed and latest versions of the SDK from couple of weeks ago dropped the perfomance by 15 to 20% across the board. Now before Xbox fans get mad at me: this happens all the time during development and will be eventually fixed, BUT there is no chance for a early October release.
#Truthfact No. 2
And it won't be released for all 21 countries at the same time. Localization is absolute 100% bullshit, period. Truthfact. Knock-offs as launch titles and Smartglass will be ready as well, but there doesn't seem to be a coherent vision for the console's launch.
#Truthfact No. 3
Sony PS4 will launch in late October - SDKs are ready.
#Truthfact No. 4
For those people who were mad about Bayonetta 2 going exclusively Wii U, you'll be somewhat unhappy about what Microsoft is money-hatting PlatinumGames for. Other Japanese developers will join PG as well, but PG is 100% on board. The game is not aimed at North Americans or Europeans, so expect a truly Japanese feeling title (probably for the JPN Xbox One launch).
#Truthfact No.5
There was a MOBA developed by Bigpark, but it was "nuked" and now a lot of studios focus on TV services. The best talent went to Big Tusk or left SM (?) entirely. Rare is still focused on Kinect despite whatever you've heard.
#Truthfact No.6
New Indie policy is still not set in stones and will be finalized after the Xbox One launch.
#Truthfact No.7
Early September surprise. Apologizing it advance. Everything I saw over the last 24 months was that nonsense of a "Kinect-less" SKU. So I can confirm that there are "whispers" of a Xbox One SKU without Kinect early next year around March/April. This isn't set in stone and they'll probably wait and see how launch numbers will look like.
An Ass Storm is coming.