GamerBraves Newsletter vol. 9 - Xbox lost at SEA

Why is it so hard for Southeast Asians to get Xbox?

GamerBraves

Sep 22, 2021

Welcome to the ninth issue of the GamerBraves Newsletter!

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This week, we’ll take a look at the Xbox, its newer gen-versions and how they perform in Southeast Asia.

Why Doesn't Xbox Sell When in Southeast Asia

Microsoft has certainly been making waves in the video game world the past year or so with the launch of the Xbox Series X, most notably the launch of the Xbox GamePass and the acquisition of Bethesda. The turnaround from being the former laughingstock of the big three console manufacturers in the previous certainly brought new respect for the Green Giant of consoles.

Despite this in Southeast Asia, the sales of the Xbox Series X haven't made too big of a dent. While we don't have the exact numbers, Xbox sales figures pale in comparison to the PlayStation consoles, the Switch, and mobile gaming. Why is that though? A company as big as Microsoft should surely be able to make a bigger impact. Well, it's for several reasons.

The most popular consoles in SEA. Xbox doesn’t even have its own legend.

First, there's the practical reason. The Xbox hasn't even officially launched in Southeast Asia with Singapore being the only country in the region that Xbox consoles, games, and accessories are distributed (who had actually closed down but were re-open in preparation for the Series X). This means that retailers in other SEA countries must acquire the products by sourcing them through overseas wholesalers.

This not only makes acquiring Xbox products more cumbersome and expensive but it also means that the products will lack a fixed retail price or warranty. With the money required to import the Xbox, retailers may be incentivized to raise their prices.

By comparison, Sony has a Southeast Asia division and while Nintendo doesn’t, they do officially distribute their games through local company Maxsoft. This means it's far cheaper and less expensive for retailers to sell PS or Switch products and it shows. Within Most local game stores here in Malaysia, you'll see walls covered in PlayStation and Nintendo merchandise and maybe a sad stack of a few Xbox games in a corner somewhere.

Gamers Hideout at i-City Mall, Malaysia, with a huge cutout advertising the Switch, but a small cutout for Xbox Series X | S giveaway.

This lack of SEA support also applies to The Xbox Gamepass Subscription Service. If you want Gamepass, you have to have a credit card from a foreign country which many local gamers won't have or won't' see the effort in getting. Considering that Gamepass is currently the Xbox's biggest selling point, without it there is little incentive for people to turn to the console. Even if people want to play games on PC, which Gamepass is available on, they're more likely to game over on Steam.

This lack of service also extends to publishers as well. Third-party developers often rely on the console manufacturer to provide aspects like marketing. SEA publishers work with Sony Interactive Entertainment on promotions and discounts for PlayStation titles. Developers however get zero support from Xbox due to it technically not being sold in the region.

Granted, a reason for only setting up a regional division in Singapore is likely because English is an official language of the country. Microsoft may consider it not worth the return investment to release the Xbox on other Southeast Asian countries since they speak a multitude of different languages that would take time and resources to translate.

There are a lack of JRPGs on Xbox consoles.

Although, with the exception of Thailand, Playstation gets around this by simply releasing most of their content in English. This is because many countries in Southeast Asia like Malaysia and The Philippines have fairly large markets that speak English as a second language. They also often release games with a Chinese language option due to the high Chinese diaspora in many Southeast Asian countries. Xbox could probably do the same.

There are also cultural reasons as well. The states in gaming tastes in Southeast Asia tend to follow along with the more dominant trends in Japan and China, the big gaming powerhouses in the region. This means that popular games include JRPGs, Gacha games, and more niche anime visual novel hybrid games, a lot of which simply don’t appear on Xbox consoles in the same capacity they do on their competitors.

Games from Japanese publishers like Atlus, NIS, Arc System Works, and Type-Moon tend to stay on the local Japanese consoles. Even bigger companies like Square Enix and Capcom while having multiplatform games, have offered up more timed exclusives to Sony or Nintendo and have even produced games for both PlayStation and Switch that skip the Xbox like The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles or Neo: The World Ends with You.

An old nickname for the console has been 'The Halo Machine' which has since established the Xbox's reputation for western FPS and action games. This has led to the Xbox being perceived as not having a large enough market for these more Japanese-style games. This has always been a large problem with the Xbox's attempts to get into the Japanese and overall Asian markets.

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