Xbox 360 On The Skids Retailers Consider Dumping It (Australia)

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starcraft said:

TheUltimateLife said:
yeah we have less people living here then in New York. @ star craft: lol I believe you know what your talken about even if you didnt say you were doing a case study because thoes things about microsoft have become pretty common knowledge ;) but seeing as though you are researching it you might be able to give some insight into this... I don't think the 360 will experience the alienation that the GC did in Australia but do you think MS will settle with what they're getting now or is the AU market worth fighting for? Do you have any idea where a company such as MS might see Australia on a global market?

A normal gaming company wouldn't see Australia has having much growth potential into the future.  Microsoft however, has a big incentive to be present here.  We currently have very slow download speeds (in general).  We don't have any major film or music download market as a result of this.  Even music piracy is lower here than in the rest of the Western world on average due to our slow broadband.

However, when Microsoft launches it's 360 video market place here, it will become the first major player (with the possible exception of itunes) in the Australian video-on-demand market.  Unlike itunes, the Xbox 360 is tailored to people with fast internet, increasing the possibility that Microsoft has already carved out just the right demographic here in Australia to launch it's service.

In stark contrast to gaming's minimal room to grow in this country, the film and television downloads market is only just starting to open up, and that could be worth billions of dollars to Microsoft over the long term if they can get a large piece of the pie as our broadband network slowly comes up to American/European/Japanese standards. 

 

  Australia is equipped with ADSL2+ now and quite a few people aged between 15-25 are familiar with the concept of torrents and P2P. Have you seen the latest TV ratings lately, shows are down across the board most likely due to downloading off the net. Retailers have never favoured low selling hardware. PSP hasn't exactly dried up, it still is given the dark corner. PS3 and the Wii have more going for it.