Home Gaming South African Xbox Live issue in the media again

South African Xbox Live issue in the media again

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So it appears that I am famous today…

A big thanks is owed to Ilse from News24 for following up with Microsoft about the lack of Xbox Live in South Africa.

Unfortunately Microsoft’s response has once again fallen far short of what the gamers in South Africa would like to hear.

However there is a slight light at the end of this tunnel.

Cindy White from Microsoft had the following to say

If we could find a smart, cost effective and credible means to collect this data (number of live users in SA), we would love to have the information

So we have an in, if we can prove how many people connect locally they would have to come up with a new excuse. Mind you why don’t they just run a report on their IP logs to see how many South Africa IP’s have connected in the last week?

Anyway if they are still speaking to me I’ll ask them that, if not we are going to need to find a new way… Do we have any analysts in the Xbox arena who would know how to gather effective and credible data? I wonder if Microsoft would be willing to sponsor a targeted market survey?

Hey at least we are staying in the mass media…

Oh and if you are on of my new News24 visitors smile, wave, vote and I hope to see you again, we are here all year 🙂

Last Updated: November 19, 2007

10 Comments

  1. SauRoN

    November 19, 2007 at 15:54

    This is definitely not something a third party can or should be responsible for.

    It appears to me that Microsoft SA is completely disconnected from the Global Microsoft, or prefers to operate in that fashion.

    They simply need to pull internal IP statistics, which will clearly show them how many connections have been made from the South African IP Range.

    This is really a one click process to filter data that is already logged in their system.

    Cindy White needs to hand this over to someone who actually has a clue what the hell Xbox Live is, and how it works.

    Reply

  2. LifelongGamer

    November 19, 2007 at 16:01

    Just like to point a critical flaw in Cindy White’s request. As I read it, they’re looking for ammunication to build a viable business case to launch XBL in South Africa based purely on how many gamers are currently connecting to XBL in other countries using unsupported methods.

    I love my XBox 360 but refuse to connect to XBL until it is officially supported here. I don’t know how many other gamers feel the same, but I would imagine a lot of gamers feel that already paying R500 – R600 for new games is already spending far too much to still be over-spending on overseas gamerpoints and paying foreign currency rates to connect for the gold service.

    If Retail Sales of XBox 360 are accurate then it stands to reason that Cindy White would do far better to build a business case around total number of consoles in the market, factor in broadband penetration (ADSL, Wireless which is on the increase) and put together a price system that our market can sustain.

    An alternative could be for Microsoft to enhance the XBL service to allow ‘virtual servers’ to cater for countries like SA where it’s not yet feasible to host locally, but through the design of local portals / routing allow gamers to register locally, pay in Rand and filter online games using SA-based IP addresses. I’m sure this short-term solution would suffice until our telecoms environment has improved substantially and uptake grows to ‘acceptable’ levels to host XBL locally. Sure it still means using international bandwidth, but paying local currency and having games filtered for SA would be better than the current situation?

    Only looking at the 2000-odd that currently have contacts / disposable income to pay overseas exchange rates will not only further delay XBL launching in SA but also result in the service being priced higher than it should be.

    Peace.
    LLG.

    Reply

  3. bokka1

    November 19, 2007 at 16:26

    I will be happy if we could just pay in Rands and use our credit cards with our SA addresses. A few guys have been blocked on their Gamertags because their cc address does not match their Live registration address.(Slapdash had to get a whole new profile and start from scratch as Havok)

    I will personally attend the launch party of Live(and get extremely pissed on M$ booze) whenever that happens.

    Reply

  4. Banana hammock

    November 20, 2007 at 06:46

    Firstly, congrats to Lazy for making a big splash, that’s really the only way to get any attention from some of these companies.

    Second, i agree with Sauron, this is something that MS could easily do internally and is not the responsibility of the consumer.

    One thing though, really what she is asking for is a list of all SA XboX users who are using live ILLEGALLY, hope that’s not the reason for the info gathering. Imaging if she banned all the consoles on the list once provided! That would be classic!

    Why not just set up a website where people can register their name and usernames, then just spread the word on all the forums?

    Reply

  5. Redzombie

    November 20, 2007 at 06:51

    you know what… they should not use us that are so called illegal on live but the amount of consoles sold..
    What are they going to do, go to Ms and say these guys are on euro live illegal give them sa live? no they should say… listed we have sold 30 000 machines give us live . Man ! this is upsetting
    PS and if MS blocks my account.. i will happily just sell my xbox and go back to the other big arrogant bully PS3

    Reply

  6. Banana hammock

    November 20, 2007 at 09:08

    Unfortunately SA has the same problem with both XboX and PS3, the number of consoles we sell is an absolute joke. We are nothing more than a piss in the ocean.

    Take all the sales from SA out of their equations and you won’t even notice a difference. So they are never going to focus on us.

    Reply

  7. ManesanZA

    November 20, 2007 at 13:35

    Banana Hammock, the PS2 sold almost a million consoles in SA. I think thats why the PS3 had the PSN at launch here. If MS ignores SA the PS3 will eventually hammer them in SA

    Reply

  8. doobiwan

    November 20, 2007 at 14:26

    I agree. The impression I get is that the 360 is actually doing exceptionally well here against the PS3 because of the price and first mover advantage.

    If MS moves quickly they could take SA this round by quite a margin.

    Reply

  9. Banana hammock

    November 20, 2007 at 14:53

    They don’t care about PS3 hammering XboX here because we are insignificant.

    You say they launched PSN here, no they didn’t, we link to the EU site, we can just use rands and SA credit cards that’s all. This is a very simple thing to do and the least that MS could do as well.

    There are no SA based servers for the PS3, and SA sold 700,000 PS2s out of 120 million. We are not denting anyones figures. They would be better off focussing their attention on the Indian market, and that’s exactly what’s happening.

    Reply

  10. doobiwan

    November 20, 2007 at 18:43

    Looking at what Xbox live India is doing with things like educational content is pretty inspired. I hope they do similarly here.

    Reply

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