With Poland’s “Xbox Lie” campaign making the media rounds at the moment, there’s been a fair spotlight on the fact that many countries – our own included – have been repeatedly denied The Xbox’s 360’s online component, Xbox Live – arguably the platform’s strongest point. Since the console’s local launch in 2006, we’ve been told that it’s coming – and nearly 4 years later we still have nothing. With renewed media attention on the lack of Xbox Live, we thought it would be a good time to speak to our local Microsoft representative and see if they had any new information for us. Instead of the usual response of “Xbox 360 is a true next-generation digital entertainment experience, that with or without Live the experiences can be enjoyed," we were treated to one that stirs up at least a little hope in the prospect of South Africa getting Xbox Live support. “All I can say at this stage is that Microsoft’s next financial year will be one of the biggest years for Xbox 360 globally and everything will be disclosed at E3 this year,” said Microsoft’s Yvette Van Rooyen. So I guess we’ll find out at E3. It’s not a “yes,” but it’s not a “no” either – but at least it’s something, right? Right? Guys, where are you going? | 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
1:00 pm
March 10, 2010
1:10 pm
She is talking about the Motion controller I think , so don’t get your hopes up . They do not care about the SA gamer , as simple as that. Go PSN , free yourself from their bs.
March 10, 2010
1:12 pm
Which financial year system do they use? April being the start or January? I know Japan take the fiscal year from April to March
March 10, 2010
1:24 pm
*cough* Same crap different day… So tired of waiting for LIVE. Haven’t even renewed my gold membership either. Ill go gold when we go local
March 10, 2010
1:36 pm
Why do you build me up (build me up), buttercup, baby just to let me down (let me down), and mess me around.
March 10, 2010
1:45 pm
this local live thing stopped being an issue so long ago. We jumped the hoops, we got the account. Local live will mean getting new accounts and giving up our GS and DLC. (well licence migration is a schlep).
If they can just stop the rubbish region blocking and stop gimping our special editions, i’ll be more than happy.
March 10, 2010
1:46 pm
Awesome I’ll definitely attend E3… Oh wait that’s in another country where they think we all ride elephants to work and have lions as pets… do they even know we have televisions?
I assume they will show us natal and how awesome it is to use on X-box live then go on saying that there is not enough support to bring it to good old SA.
March 10, 2010
1:54 pm
agreed, i’m all hooked up – what’s the big deal? support?
March 10, 2010
2:09 pm
Lets be realistic, Even IF MS knew we were going to get LIVE eventually , they would of never screwed our Limited editions and special editions up in the first place. They aren’t planning on giving us LIVE this Generation.
don’t you find it funny that we never even got the GoW2 Game of the year edition? Its like waiting for Jessica Alba to just magically appear on your door step saying, Ive been searching for you all my life.
Guess what… Not Gonna happen either lol
March 10, 2010
2:11 pm
Well even our pidgins transport data faster then our “best” telephone lines… Ironic isnt it
March 10, 2010
2:27 pm
I am hoping they finally do what we have been asking them to do for years and that is to simply acknowledge us as a Live enabled country without a local server.
That’s all we really care about in the end, that and local pricing would be awesome
March 10, 2010
2:41 pm
Even though PSN is a free service it still isn’t local, so don’t really see your point…
March 10, 2010
2:56 pm
The cost of international bandwith from our ISP’s are as low as R14.50 a gig. Local bandwith costs something like R10 for 10 gigs. Telkom is rumored to have 10mbps and 12mbps lines available by June. Also there’s rumours of their data packages starting at 10gig instead of 1gig. Exciting times
March 10, 2010
3:11 pm
LOL, I can just see it, BIG E3 announcment, SA gets xbox live!!
March 10, 2010
3:28 pm
Local bandwidth is just too expensive for hosting – as you guys should know already – so I doubt we would ever get a local server. But you are right, just to be ‘enabled’ but without a server really shouldn’t be too hard.
March 10, 2010
3:40 pm
Lets see.
PSN:
1. Lists items in Rands
2. Does not ban you for buying stuff.
3. Uses local servers for downloads when queued.
That is local enough for me.
March 10, 2010
3:44 pm
‘Zagctly. Local enough by my standards.
March 10, 2010
4:06 pm
How do you buy from PSN if you don’t have a credit card?
March 10, 2010
4:10 pm
You can buy OFFICIAL, LOCAL PSN cards from Zaps, CNA and BT games in RAND denominations.
http://btgames.co.za/btgames/gamepage.asp?C05973
That’s pretty good local support, if you ask me.
March 10, 2010
4:19 pm
Why would you buy from PSN? There is nothing on there…
March 10, 2010
5:56 pm
lol this is a joke.
March 10, 2010
9:48 pm
More like ‘All countries in the world are now Live enabled’
That would make a lot of people very happy indeed and is simply a software change
March 11, 2010
2:26 am
[...] found this article Rumour : South Africa Getting Xbox Live? | LazyGamer .:: Console and PC Gaming News ::. So maybe this Poland thing will benifit all those without Live __________________ To view [...]
March 11, 2010
8:44 am
I completely disagree. There is no such thing as “local enough”. Sure it helps when its in rands and the downloads are local, there’s no denying that. But surely having your games hosted locally is what its all about. Games not running peer-to-peer escapes this, but isn’t that the point of having Live/PSN locally the point?
March 11, 2010
9:37 am
Come guys, this will never ever happen. And why should they come to the party when you already paying them quite happily for half a service. My subscription lapsed at the end of last year and I’m not giving them another blue penny, ever. I mean they don’t even recognise SA as a real country but on PSN I see that everything is in Rands. Please someone explain that to me (rhetorical) how the biggest and richest company in the world can provide such a service when Sony, which is much smaller and less financially capable, can do it. Thank god I’m not one of the paying suckers anymore. I’m with Sony now.
March 11, 2010
9:51 am
Because the people that are currently paying are a very niche market. There are thousands of Xbox owners who have never been on Live in SA.
March 11, 2010
11:38 am
true that ? would you waste r500 a year sub – or rather spend that r500 on fxing the RRoD???
March 11, 2010
11:19 pm
As long as I can play online on Live, I don’t particularly care about local support. The removal of region locking would be nice, but aside from that I have no complaints to be honest.
tl;dr version: As long as they don’t ban me for playing, I’m perfectly happy.