OCT. 13, 2010 • As of November 10 the Xbox Live service will officially expand into new territories. The newly added markets are: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and South Africa. Subscribers in these countries who already have accounts in nearby regions will be able to migrate their Live accounts and maintain their profile, gamerscore, achievements, points balance and subscription time remaining. Downloaded content such as your avatar items, Arcade games, videos and game add-ons will transfer as long as they are saved to the console’s hard drive, or a USB drive.
Impact: In the last year Microsoft finally started generating more revenue from content sales on Xbox Live than subscriptions. That’s a huge distinction as Live is seeded into more emerging markets where retail game piracy is high. Success for the system, therefore, will be progressively tied to how much content Microsoft can deliver digitally. The addition of these markets is welcome, yet we believe the pace that Live is localized needs to be faster.
