Microsoft has officially announced, during its keynote speech at the annual E3 gaming summit in Los Angeles, that it will be delivering it's online Xbox LIVE gaming service to South Africa.

 

This is part of an initiative to launch Xbox LIVE in nine new countries; namely South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece,  Hungary, Poland and Russia.

 

General Manager for Xbox LIVE, Marc Whitten revealed that the service will be rolled out this summer, which indicates that it will be released locally during South Africa's winter due to difference in hemispheres. It will reportedly offer a number of features including matchmaking, friends list, Achievements, Gamerscore, as well as a customised Games Marketplace.

 

Local Xbox 360 owners have long complained about the lack of Xbox LIVE support locally. As a result, those players who wish to access the service have, until now, been forced to register fake accounts based in the USA or the UK. This has also meant that South African players have lost out on a considerable amount of the downloadable content available on the Xbox LIVE platform due to an arcane rule which governs content distributed to all outlying Xbox 360 territories by strict German content law standards. 

 

“This is an exciting step forward in the experience we can deliver to our loyal and committed Xbox communities,” states Yvette van Rooyen, product and marketing manager, Xbox 360 South Africa.

 

“Xbox fans in South Africa will now be able play the best games in the industry with the 23 million other Xbox LIVE users across the world who have made this their online gaming destination of choice.” 

 

Microsoft is still expected to hold its emerging markets keynote later this week which should shed some more light on the details behind the service.