Microsoft: Aussie Game Prices Should Stablise, Xbox Live Video Marketplace Coming Soon

360_logo.jpgScreenplay’s Jason Hill managed to corner Jeremy Hinton, Xbox Product Marketing Manager, for an interview about pretty much everything. There’s a focus on Xbox 360 and Microsoft, as you’d expect, but Jason was able to sneak in a few general questions about the industry.

Take this gem regarding the Xbox Live Video Marketplace and its absence from our consoles:

It’s something that we are absolutely still working on, pushing the global team for. There’s three factors at play here. The first and the most time consuming is the negotiation of rights across multiple territories. We’ve got a team based in the US that run this for every region globally, and it’s a time consuming process … Secondly, obviously we’re not the largest Xbox territory, so there are territories in front of us in the queue. But we’re not far behind those who have already received it … And thirdly, we do face local broadband challenges.

To summarise – still negotiating rights, we’re not big enough to be a priority and our broadband isn’t up to scratch.

Hinton was also brave enough to provide an opinion on the insane pricing of games compared to the US and the subsequent importing of titles from overseas:

I think right now the numbers [of people importing]are relatively small, but that doesn’t mean that they may not increase very rapidly. But at the same time, consumers are certainly well within their rights to do so. If they are able to find a better deal and its going to work on their system, they are absolutely within their rights to do that.

Hinton goes on to say that it takes time for pricing to match the exchange rate, and that things should settle as long as we’re patient.

It’s a great interview, and there’s quite a bit more to it than what I’ve pulled out here. I highly recommend taking a closer look.

Boxing on [Screenplay, thanks Luke P.]


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