Well this is some great news isn’t it! It looks like the possibility of Xbox Live coming to South Africa is become better and better.
ITweb.co.za reports that “Xbox product manager John Press is confident Microsoft would greenlight an Xbox Live expansion into the country.”
Press says that there are already 4000 Xbox live users in SA (sshhhhhhh* thats us) and he says that they hope to attract more. He also goes on to say that:
“The pressing question is always ‘what is Xbox Live and why don’t we have it?’†He explains that Microsoft had not formerly launched its online gaming service in SA simply because the country is not the “only emerging market out thereâ€.
“Yet we are working closely with the people in charge and we want to convince Microsoft that when Xbox Live is launched in SA, they will have a 100% adequate service.â€
After watching the E3 conference from Microsoft, I realised that with their new turn to a more casual market, we would be seeing a truckload of marketing coming from them from now till the December holidays.
I do feel like this could be one of the steps that they are going to be taking worldwide. Get the smaller markets as well and then get all the more casual folks to buy into all of their new features. That can’t be done without Xbox Live. Well, let’s see what happens.
*holding thumbs*
source: itweb
Last Updated: July 18, 2008
Rudolph
July 18, 2008 at 13:30
woooooooooooooooooooooot!!!
*holding thumbs*
Lupus
July 18, 2008 at 14:00
I’ll only start holding my breath out of excitement when there is something a little more official.
janrik
July 18, 2008 at 14:12
Hope I can keep or transfer my gamercard.
I’m not letting my 30K score go!
evilredzombie
July 18, 2008 at 14:21
Mother F…… Oh family site, Now this would be schweet..
evilredzombie’s last blog post..Alone on the shelf
Jak
July 18, 2008 at 14:33
I really want this to be true but the fact that most peoples caps are 3 gigs and there about and one decent download is 500mb…it doesnt seem to me that they are going to make a lot of money here and launch it until Telkom stops being stingy pieces of Sh*t
koldFU5iON
July 18, 2008 at 14:37
😥
janrik
July 18, 2008 at 15:01
You can Top your cap up mate. I’m at 13 gigs allready for this month.
RivaZA
July 18, 2008 at 15:15
Whatever! Tell me another one. MS don’t give two fly sh_ts about live in SA.
Lydon
July 18, 2008 at 15:53
So? The fact is that you pay through your teeth for a 3Gb account then have to pay even more to top it up. I go through a load of data every month and to be quite honest, I just won’t be able to handle such huge XBL downloads on top of it.
doobiwan
July 18, 2008 at 18:16
To the contrary they just want to do it themselves unlike Nintendo or Sony.
The thing is it’s really of little impact. Content will still be hosted overseas and it’s cheaper to buy online anyway (R27 a month)
Kale
July 21, 2008 at 10:50
Wow amazing the same promise made 2 years ago. Please… MS are just blowing smoke up everyone a$$ again. Buy a PS3 atleast they offer the service and it’s free. (BTW – I own both)
doobiwan
July 21, 2008 at 11:03
Dude, that may be the case, but even paid for, gimped Live! is still better than PSN, even at 2.41.
Throw in the new stuff from E3, and it’s back to “absolutely no contest”
Kale
July 21, 2008 at 12:38
I’m not arguing the quality of service on offer. I am arguing the service actually being offered. What’s the point of having live if you can’t buy from them? It no longer accepts South African credit cards so new customers are screwed. You can buy points from Take2 at R150 more than the price on offer – but why should I pay more… Yea PS3 isn’t the best on offer but at least I’m playing Battlefield bad company over the net lag free and it only cost me the price of the game (and line rental etc.). If we had live I would agree with you whole heartedly – the point is we don’t even though the promise was made 2 years ago – not everyone can afford the service at overseas rates.
LazySAGamer
July 21, 2008 at 12:42
Oh don’t get me wrong I absolutely agree with you.
The fact that they have sold 60 000 consoles here is more than enough reason to finally give us Live.
I find it hugely insulting to us that we don’t have it and I raise it every single time I see the guys.
doobiwan
July 21, 2008 at 16:29
R30? peanuts. This is way it’s worth it to pay for the large scale managed service:
http://kotaku.com/5027126/konami-sorry-for-mgo-expansion-clusterfuck-but-no-fix-in-sight
JimBob
July 21, 2008 at 21:19
And this is why it’s not:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080107-class-action-lawsuit-targets-microsoft-for-xbox-live-outages.html
😉
Seriously, though, I don’t have a problem with the cost of Xbox Live, but I’m getting increasingly irritated with not being able to download M content, credit card hassles, and all the other problems of not having local support for the service.
Microsoft SA should just shut up with empty promises, and come back when it has a launch date. That they offer no account migration options also makes the mind boggle – do they live in a world where people stay in one country their whole lives?