Loading ...
904 Views | 4 Comments
India is one weird country to live in, especially if you have the munchies for videogames. Earlier last month, we had brought you news about the Halo 3 Xbox 360 contest for India, as well as announcing that the Xbox LIVE service will be made available along with the release of Halo 3 in India - one year after the console’s launch here.
Well, you can scratch all of that. Or, rather, almost all of that. When asked on the official Xbox forums as to when 2K Games’ trailblazing game, BioShock would be made available in India, Country Manager of Microsoft India’s Entertainment and Devices Division, Mohit Anand, had said that the game would be available by the last week of August. Tops.
But with The Darkness releasing in India almost a month after it’s US and European release dates, many Xbox 360 gamers in India, including yours truly, were just plain scared that the situation would repeat itself all over again. Needless to say, when the amended announcement comes that the game would actually be released in the last week of September or the first week of October, all hell broke loose. With personal insults being traded every which way on the Xbox forums, many started turning to what they usually did under such circumstances - order the game off international game retailers like Play-Asia and Game.co.uk.
Considering that the Xbox 360 Premium version costs a whoppingly insane INR 27,750 or $694, most Xbox 360 owners in India have found themselves at the short end of a rope when it comes to third party titles for the console - with many a game getting frustratingly delayed, and a major chunk of them (most notably Ubisoft’s games) not even showing up on shelves. But here’s where the situation goes from worse to worst…
After a year’s presence in the Indian gaming market, the Xbox LIVE service is yet to see the light of the day, with most people having to fake their GamerTags and order their subscriptions cards from outside the country to get their LIVE goodness. After having announced that the service should be up and running by the time Halo 3 launches next month, the official word has now come through that the service will be made available only by the end of October. Sameer Desai, of 360indians, had this announcement to make:
“There has been growing frustration at the delays in launching the LIVE service in India. We reported a while back that India would get Xbox LIVE in September, coinciding with the entire Halo 3 hoopla. But that plan has since fallen through and now Xbox LIVE is scheduled to launch in October, latest by October 29 when the server update takes place. There is also a strong likelihood that the Xbox LIVE fall update will take place on October 29 as well. Robbie Bach (President of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division) will be in India for the Xbox LIVE launch.”
To compensate for this travesty, however, Microsoft India has promised to release 12 new accessories for the console in India over the next 90 days, including the Halo 3 wireless controllers and the entire range of Xbox LIVE accessories, including the headset and the LIVE Vision Camera as well as the possibility of pre-ordering the Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360 soon. Wait, so you are delaying the LIVE launch and postponing the launch of the most anticipated title on the planet and then calm down people with the Halo 3 controllers and a bunch of Xbox LIVE accessories that we can’t use anyway?
Great! We have also sent out emails to 2K Games’ PR and Distribution Centers for comments on the Xbox 360 and the PC releases of BioShock, and we’ll let you know more as soon as they get back to us. Go ahead, you know you want to sit in a dark corner and cry your heart out. We already did.
TRANSLATE
Translate this post into your favorite language. Click on any of the flags below to view the translated version. NOTE: Translations use the AltaVista Babel Fish Translation Service and may not be 100% accurate.
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  | ||||||
| By N2H | |||||||||
August 19th, 2007 at 10:54 am
*grin* preloaded *cough* Steam *cough* PC *grin* *grin*
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:29 am
[...] whatever I turn on - Steam or the Xbox 360. After initial confirmation about the next Fall Update coming sometime around October, it looks like the update will bundle more than just the usual crap that we don’t really give [...]
September 18th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
[...] I had for him. We squabbled about recent incidents like the message board trauma surrounding the BioShock release (which was just last Friday, for those keeping score), and of course, the million dollar question [...]
October 17th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
[...] what is it? Xbox LIVE? Price cut? New accessories? HD-DVD player? Holiday bundles? Free footrubs for customers? [...]