Xbox and PlayStation ignores South East Asian Gamers, why?
Xbox and PlayStation support only East Asia
While PlayStation has a little more support for Southeast Asian countries, like how PlayStation has local pricing for Singapore and PSN for Malaysia and Philippines, somehow PS Now is not available in any southeast asian countries.
Xbox has local pricing and Xbox Live for Singapore but the rest of SEA, well, if you own an Xbox console, you don’t have local pricing or even Xbox Live. Yes, they have PC Game Pass but not Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, so no cloud and while Singapore has Game Pass Ultimate and great internet infrastructure, there isn’t Xbox Cloud Gaming support.
So why?
Singapore gaming culture is very much alive.
You might think “Yea but Singapore, just like all the other Asian countries, love PC Gaming more than consoles” or you might even think “Because PlayStation is the number one console for Asian countries” but I live here, and I can tell you that there’s an equal split for PC, Xbox and PS platforms.
Majority of the people that I know also own all 3 platforms, I myself own all 3 platforms as well. The reason being? We tend to not care, we usually only care about where our games are.
But recently, it really feels like Xbox or PlayStation doesn’t matter, it actually feels like choosing the same thing in a different color, like a shirt with the same design and same material but in a green or blue color
What can be improved?
It’s simple isn’t it? Start by supporting the community in SEA. Decrease the price of PlayStation 5 back to the original SRP or drop more bundles here, add PlayStation Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming services, add Xbox Live/Network to more SEA countries and simply, make more gaming events.
What more can they do? Lowering the price of games to a better price than almost $100 in Singapore for the standard edition of a game, I think Sony could start that trend.
Secondly, they should really reduce the price of accessories, a controller is priced over at 100+ and the PSVR 2 is priced at almost $900 dollars and if you add the PS5 Digital Console (Cheapest) at the price around 700++, you can see how expensive the console hobby is on the PS5 side if you are just a casual gamer and they can reduce that.
Lastly, it’s very simple right? Add cloud gaming, it cannot be easier than that. Cloud gaming allows more people to access console gaming.
Conclusion
Xbox has tried to make some moves in Asia but it seems like only pushing for East Asia instead of All of Asia, they need to make more moves in SEA and beyond of Asia.
PlayStation is too comfortable in Asia; they have done some stuff and now basically do the bare minimum in SEA.
I mean, there’s no cloud gaming, which is easy to add and in terms of support, they can also not add a full Japanese game instead of the English version, just because it’s the PS+ in Asia
And lastly, just make more and more community events, it’s weird that Xbox and PlayStation just doesn’t do this anymore
Back in the 2009 and more, there were a ton of community events from both Xbox and PlayStation, bring those back!
