Just moments after receiving the press release that 2008 was the Australian games industry’s biggest year ever, Microsoft followed up with word that they too had an awesome 2008. Not only did they crack the half million console mark in Australia, but they absolutely blitzed it on Xbox Live, with membership increasing 88% on 2007.Other Xbox-related stats worth noting are that Aussies spent over 27 million hours on Xbox Live, made 4.2 million downloads and that more than half of the 500,000 Xbox 360′s in the country are connected to Live. On top of that, each 360 console has an average of 8 games sitting next to it on the shelf, and 63% of the 500 games for Xbox 360 are rated G or PG.
So, overall, 2008 was a good year for gaming in Australia, so long as you take out the tales of RRoD, the lack of an R18+ rating for games and the subsequent classification issues that arise from that, Sony’s PS3-killing firmware (and wallet killing price) and probably lots of other issues that arose in 2008. 2009 though – that’s where the real gaming heroes will be made…
doubleDizz
January 20, 2009 at 2:34 PM
And of the 27 million hours we spent on XBOX Live, 10 million of those were spent trying to connect to a player-hosted match. A wait so long, that once we did finally get into a match, we found our ping to be so much in the red that it wasn’t worth playing. Well, that conclusion was only reached after several attempts to persevere through the lag. Times when we decided “playing the game laggy must be better than not playing it at all…right?” I mean, this must be Microsoft’s viewpoint, seeing as they want us to pay for the XBL subscription but feel we don’t deserve an XBL Server in SE Asia.
Unfortunately, if anyone did try to play on a player-hosted match, they’d normally be bombarded with chatter from American players, whinging about how their sudden 0.2 second lag from the player in the red is ruining their game. And subsequently be kicked by the host.
But all of this must be ok! Because we still keep paying Microsoft for the XBOX Live Service. A service that offers about 50% of what the American-paying gamers receive. But that’s ok….right?
Report PermalinkJaycobC
January 20, 2009 at 7:05 PM
lulz @ DoubleDizz
Report PermalinkDAWOOKIE
January 20, 2009 at 8:59 PM
Here bloody here! Come on MS fair suck of the sav!
Report PermalinkRRoD Flanders
January 20, 2009 at 9:49 PM
Lol doubleDizz
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