SEAsia, the tiny, unimportant market...that could!

First off, let me introduce myself. I' m a Singaporean girl, who owns a NSTC-J Xbox; Xbox 360 has been released here btw, though I' m unsure of the actual region code for it (considering we have Elder Scrolls, prolly the US or European PAL format...)

Singapore is a really REALLY small island country set at the end of peninsular Malaysia. Basically, our name is bigger than the actual island itself on most globes/maps ;p Nonetheless, we ARE a highly modernised city and unlike the mostly Islamic countries surrounding us, we are predominantly Chinese (70%), with Indian, Malay and Eurasian populations. (please do not misunderstand the above statement! I' m not anti-Islamic, but it' s one of the most telling features that Singapore has...other than being basically small).

I realise that not many people know, or care, of the SEAsian market for the Xbox, or for any of the consoles for that matter (though I believe we are lumped together as ' Asia' when Sony cites its sales).

And honestly, who can blame any of the market experts about this? Consoles are not a large fixture in the homes of many SEAsian families; I believe Singapore and Malaysia are the countries with the higher percentages that do, and it isn' t much.

You may wonder why I seperate SEAsia and larger Asia. Basically, culture in SEAsia is very much different from the areas of China, Japan, Korea etc. in the northern atmosphere. Having predominantly Islamic countries is definitely a major factor, while the other countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia etc. are still largely not as developed as those larger countries. Singapore has the fortune of being the most modernised though not the largest (and prolly, being small had geo-political advantageous to our political leaders. A smaller country is MUCH easier to run =/)

That said, consoles never really picked up well in this area. Gaming itself is not a highly popular nor respected leisure activity, let alone console gaming. The most is the arcade format (and then, not that much either) and the PC platform.

Despite this, Microsoft saw fit to at least market the Xbox a little in Singapore, with promises of slightly cheaper locally made games. That was about it. Being stuck with the NTSC-J format meant we had a portion of American games and only a portion of Japanese games with English in any form =/

I can say that, we don' t have Baldur' s Gate, we don' t have Arx Fatalis, we don' t have the English version of Otogi 2 (Otogi 1 was released in English and only for a limited period. I bought the Otogi and Otogi 2 special over the internet), don' t have the English version of Panzer Dragoon Orta. Although we do have Buffy, much to the pleasure of my SISTER =/

Of course, there were much more, but these were the ones I was kinda most looking forward too. Stuck with only FPS and Sports simulators wasn' t exactly the best situation for me. I love Fighting games, but couldn' t get the English OR Japanese Bloody Roar (I' m a fan of it, I know it ain' t that great), though Guilty Gear helped to tide me over.

Again, I tell you I' m a girl. Gender discrimination is bad, but honestly I hate sports simulators, and am NOT interested in Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball (if there were guys, then sure, duh!)

It was heartening to have the games locally made, but it truly sucked to have SOME of the best of the US world, and not much else =(

And now Xbox 360 is out here. I' m so tempted truly (Elder Scrolls wooh! Lost Odyssey and hopefully much much much more Mistwalker stuff wooh!) and yet I can' t help but be scared of being disappointed again. (not betrayed, I knew what the Xbox was home to, and I was willing to take the risk for PDO at the time)

My original plan was to get PS3 so I could play the old PS2 games along with PS3 and my Xbox games. Cross-console satisfaction. It would' ve made me happy.

Now, the Xbox 360 is starting to really get some semblance of respect again. Microsoft may not have everything, but it definitely has that warchest to fight on!

But, with all the take of the Japan market, the North/South American market, the Europe market, where does this put the SEAsian market? Sure, we live on pirated goods, I admit it (though ironically I never modded my Xbox, go me for helping the industry), hence why companies tend to see us a really sore spot. But you know, it doesn' t help either when the incentives are so bad for us to go legit =/

Anyway, your thoughts =) Plus, love it to find an intelligent forum right here. I hope to spend most of my time now =)

The SEAsian girl with the Xbox. Target market anomaly =)

Something tells me you write this post in diffrent forums to see what they responde...
And its something fishy with it...

But...hello!
Im swedish and got my 360 and love it and many AAA titles on its way this year,btw enchant arm and kameo must look good to you?!

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

I' m a Singaporean girl

Hey baby!

Welcome to the forums. Good to see a well thought out and intelligent first post. Usually they' re along the line of " OMG tEh PS3 pwnZ j00" .

It' s definitely a touchy subject. Like you said yourself, the piracy levels make it prohibitive to many publishers. I know how you feel, knowing that great games aren' t being released locally. This happened in Australia (where I live) for most of the 16bit and PS/64 era. Games like Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and many other great games were never released in Aus. Luckily the publishers of Australia seem to have sorted themselves out and we get most of the games now (though some still don' t locally make it). Australia' s problem isn' t piracy - it' s the fact that the market is smaller than most.

Your best bet is to continue buying games that aren' t released locally on the internet - and hope that in time, the problems won' t be as apparant. That' s what I do.

Yeah, even thouigh i have no problems getting any game i want locally, i still buy most of my stuff from play.com, -- or if i' m importing Lik-Sang and Play-Asia.

Aren' t Japanese 360' s REALLY cheap at the moment?!

OMG tEh PS3 pwnZ j00



How you doing (yes its mandatory to have stupid comments written to you when you tell you are a girl)

Hey baby!

lol Majix... *tut*..anyway welcome to the forums it' s nice to have a girls input so welcome. Totally agree with you i' m not too bothered about doa volley ball. And yey I haven' t met a girl that would play elder of the scrolls. As for the market issue i think we' ll see microsoft cater for it as it' s planning on doing for the middle east and it' s a very good idea to make your product available to as many as you can so i think microsoft' s noted that. By the way your english is brilliant compared to a lot of american sony fan boys that barge in with crap like ' sony pwns' and the rest...anyway welcome yet again and hope you like it here.

Lol a girl?...

They are so noobish,look in rpg all they can do is have high mana and wear mini skirt,lol at them.

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

ORIGINAL: Dasher232

By the way your english is brilliant compared to a lot of american sony fan boys that barge in with crap like ' sony pwns' and the rest

I' m seeing a bit of hating and fanboyism myself....

..Oh, and, ' Hey' .

NiGHTS into Dreamcast

Hey, its allways good to get new people Joining Kikzio, we dont haqve the biggest fourms on the planet but the amount of intelligent discussion that goes on here might surprize you. That is, unless you been watching this forum for a while now.

Anyway, Priacy is a big problem over on your end, but dont worry about it, Publishers will blame anything but their crap games on poor sales. No wonder Ken' s Misty Adventure Advance 2 didnt sell.

Even living in europe, it isnt as peachy as it sounds, we allways get the games last, and often pricay moves faster than.. publshing marketing in different regions. But at least we have the magic of the Information Super Highway, to order all our games, [I love you ebay].

I am sure it will say if you have a pal or American 360 on the console or booklets you get with it.
osoft fan


Warning! if your not a ex/current Sega fan, Kikizo no like you.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

Holy crap ...guys you gonna wet yourselves :)

I don' t know what was so great about that post really ...

anyway welcome to kikizo

I don' t know if that will cheer you up , but it' s just as bad in Eastern Europe - it' s almost exactly the same.

It' s funny how you keep saying SeaAsia - I mean I' ve never heard of that kind of separation- Land Asia/ Sea Asia.

Singapore is a cool place to visit, that' s for sure - you have all those cool chineese architecture and stuff.

Hm, a little hard to sieve out the random, slightly rude, or purely ' for-fun' comments, but generally I take it as a good first impression.

Btw, I shortened ' South-East Asia' into SEAsia as that is the common acronym. Something like how USA stands for America.

And Chinese architecture? Honestly, we have hardly any architecture that hasn' t been officially preserved by the government itself, and that' s not many. Plus, our ' original' architecture were ' kampung' houses made of wood and stilts and attap; which btw is Malay, not Chinese.

If you' re wondering, our landscape marked by really western looking buildings, and flats. That' s about it =p

Yeah, our landscape sucks, urk...

As for being a Sega fan; uh, am too young to actually a say in this =/ Personally, I kind of liked it. Definitely preferred the Dreamcast to the PS until PS2 came out and kinda killed it.

Seriously, you have NO girls on this site o_0? Sorry to say that, I thought with all this intelligent discussion, I kinda thought that there must be SOME girls around. Or at least some that are masquerading as guys.

The SEAsian girl with the Xbox. Target market anomaly =)

And how young is too young? '

You could always fire up an emulator (or as most people here would say, go buy an antique :P)

Welcome to Kikizo. Too early in the mourning to read the entire post right now, however Ill get to that in a bit.

Seriously, you have NO girls on this site o_0? Sorry to say that, I thought with all this intelligent discussion, I kinda thought that there must be SOME girls around. Or at least some that are masquerading as guys.

Rikka and Sharon tend to be the majority and most frequent female posters here. My girlfriend will post occasionally. However, she doesnt have internet access so its not often. Others tend to come and go.

Welcome to Kikizo. I' m a little late but your post was kind of long (believe me people here are lazy, it seems most of them never read any long posts and it usually takes me a couple of days before I take the time to read a really long post).

Consoles are not a large fixture in the homes of many SEAsian families

Hmm, how many hours during an average week does the average gamer play videogames over there in Singapore?
Does your comment only include consoles or is it the same with PC games? Because I remember reading an article about gaming life in Thailand. The people there played so much PC games (mostly online and Counter-Strike being the most popular) that the government had to keep kids out of some Internet-café' s and force them to have time limits because the kids became bad at school.

Anyway, keep posting. Womens opinions about videogames are always interesting.

Sega Saturns are hard to come by in Singapore, and I don' t want to pay shipping.

Plus, I' ve lost my Panzer Dragoon Saga CD-image =/ Somewhere...

Mostly, my comment applies to consoles. PC games and the Internet are usually frequented by the majority of young SEAsians as broadband here is cheap. Plus, the sheer amount of Chinese MMOs that come out are near uncountable, and the majority of Asians in general play those as opposed to Western games.

So yeah, most of the SEAsian gaming market is really reserved to PC Internet and lan games. The upper Asia region tends to have both. China appears to be focussed more on lan and internet gaming, though I expect that consoles there are also common.

Japan is prolly the key Asia region where console gamers outnumber PC gamers, for obvious reasons