Xbox LIVE SA: No indie games planned

The news of the Xbox LIVE service finally launching in the South African region in November 2010 was warmly received by local Xbox gamers. No need to set up UK or US accounts with fake addresses or buy MS Points through third-parties. No more restrictions on DLC which could not be obtained from behind an SA IP address. There was even the tempting prospect of being able to migrate an existing LIVE account to the SA service without losing anything, albeit with some technicalities.

Unfortunately, the most important aspect of a local LIVE service, the dream of content and services priced at affordable local rates was soon shattered. As it stands it is still cheaper to purchase MS points through a third party supplier than to buy points directly through LIVE South Africa.

Coupled with the decided lack of content available on the local LIVE service when compared to international counterparts, things are currently looking bleak for Xbox LIVE SA. It is understood that adding content to the local service is complicated, and there are hurdles to jump through regarding the rating of content. There was a small victory yesterday, as the Xbox LIVE SA team announced that Twitter and Facebook functionality had finally been implemented.

MyGaming caught up with the head of Microsoft’s Xbox SA team, Yvette van Rooyen, to find out when we can expect more content on the local service. “With regards to the Indie games there are no plans at present to include them in the SA service,” said van Rooyen.

With no plans for indie games, some gamers may find even less appeal in using the local service – there are some truly outstanding indie titles available for the Xbox.

“With regards to Games on Demand and Arcade titles – I am working really hard with the US team to get these loaded as soon as possible. It is quite a process and we are doing our best to get all the games loaded,” said van Rooyen.

We can only remain optimistic in this situation as the SA Xbox team works on getting the local service up the scratch. To illustrate the disparity, below we have a table comparing the number of content products on the SA LIVE service to the number of content products on the UK LIVE service.*

*[Update]: The labels in the left column appear exactly as they do on the Xbox.com website. As MyGaming readers have pointed out, some of the listed SA content products are video previews and not games. However the same method was used for gathering numbers from the UK so the comparison still holds. The fact that these numbers do not even reflect total numbers of available gaming products further detracts from the current value proposition of the SA LIVE service.

Will you migrate to Xbox LIVE South Africa when more content is added? How important are indie games for the value proposition of the Xbox LIVE SA service? << Share your views on the MyGaming forum.