A report claims that Xbox is pulling out of Saudi Arabia and other Middle East regions, and now Microsoft has responded

[Windows Central]

A new report suggested that Xbox is planning to exit Saudi Arabia leading to widespread speculation about a total exit from the wider Middle East region.

A report claims that Xbox is pulling out of Saudi Arabia and other Middle East regions, and now Microsoft has responded : Read more

 

[fjtorres5591]

A lot of wishful thinking from people who don't understand the world they live in.

As long as MS has datacenters in a region and XBOX supports the local language, XBOX will be available there. Via retail if *they* chose to, via online if not.
And last I looked, eBay alone ships to over 200 countries.

XBOX has supported arabic since 2017 and MS has 300 datacenters and 165 points of access; supporting the middle east costs them nothing.

Any availability problems are more likely to be due to import fees than suppliers not wanting to serve willing customers.

But why let common sense get in the way of floating XBOX FUD, right?

 

[fatpunkslim]

So much fake news on Xbox, it's tiring! It looks like these rumor-mongers are being paid by competitors to try to tarnish Xbox's image with this kind of defamatory campaigns.

Regarding exclusive games, there is no subject, there were only 2 service games 5 and 8 years old, SOT and grounded + 2 small games, hifi rush and pentiment. When you see the mass of Xbox exclusive games next to it, it's a drop in the ocean. Indy is a special case because it is a Disney license. Everything else exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem, apart from historically multiplatform games of course. So many false rumors about the abandonment of Xbox consoles or about the fact that Xbox would become a full third-party publisher, it's ridiculous, all without any factual basis.

@Jez Corden you should do an article on the Xbox tax, because it's a reality, lots of influencers and media sponsored by competitors spend their time spreading misinformation. There are examples almost every day.

 

[Jez Corden]

So much fake news on Xbox, it's tiring! It looks like these rumor-mongers are being paid by competitors to try to tarnish Xbox's image with this kind of defamatory campaigns.

Regarding exclusive games, there is no subject, there were only 2 service games 5 and 8 years old, SOT and grounded + 2 small games, hifi rush and pentiment. When you see the mass of Xbox exclusive games next to it, it's a drop in the ocean. Indy is a special case because it is a Disney license. Everything else exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem, apart from historically multiplatform games of course. So many false rumors about the abandonment of Xbox consoles or about the fact that Xbox would become a full third-party publisher, it's ridiculous, all without any factual basis.

@Jez Corden you should do an article on the Xbox tax, because it's a reality, lots of influencers and media sponsored by competitors spend their time spreading misinformation. There are examples almost every day.

I think some of the details here were lost in translation a bit. The original TG report just said that Xbox won't be restocking Xbox Series X|S in Saudi Arabia, which seems to be true at least in the near term, that's because Microsoft is prioritizing stock in the U.S. and other western markets due to regional sales events and gift buying cycle there. Stock levels should return to normal post-Christmas and I expect the next-gen Xbox consoles to launch there too.

 

[fatpunkslim]

I think some of the details here were lost in translation a bit. The original TG report just said that Xbox won't be restocking Xbox Series X|S in Saudi Arabia, which seems to be true at least in the near term, that's because Microsoft is prioritizing stock in the U.S. and other western markets due to regional sales events and gift buying cycle there. Stock levels should return to normal post-Christmas and I expect the next-gen Xbox consoles to launch there too.

Thanks for the clarification. This disinformation mixes with the Xbox tax, it is a problem of the media in general which oversimplifies everything, and caricatures the information. It often starts with titles like "Xbox abandons...." and then on the article it extrapolates by talking about Xbox which abandons the consoles and favors only the gamepass, which PS5 sells 5 times more (while it 'is false, 2x only), blablabla, ... But at no time do it gives the real information that you just gave.

But initially it's about Xbox tax, because smart guys like Tom Warren and others guys take information subject to interpretation and twist it. And then, it is the snowball effect which always diverts a little more information until it becomes pure disinformation.

It's like the Xbox report which asks for the opinion of developers, there too a poor little question ("If you aren't on Xbox, we'd love to know why") among dozens of others was largely taken out of its context to create disinformation. Articles saying that developers no longer develop on Xbox by taking false examples and making generalizations.

Black Myth: Wukong is a temporary exclusion / Baldur's Gate 3 (the game was released too quickly, buggy and chapter 3 was missing, it's not a desire not to release the game on Xbox, just a problem of development time of a small studio "Larian" which failed to meet its deadline / "Marvel vs. Capcom" there too, a technical problem being resolved, not a desire not to release Xbox / Enotria. : The Last Song (a simple validation problem, not a desire not to be released on Xbox, and it is being resolved. The reality is that there have never been so many games on Xbox, in fact). starting with jrpgs, with marketing exclusions, with day games in the gamepass (yakuza, persona, refantazio, visions of mana, etc.). We take 2-3 recent bad examples and make a misleading generalization. 2-3 examples of thousands of games released on Xbox.

Influencers and certain media play with this, because they know that they have a community of weirdos, who are fond of this kind of fake news. This is where we can talk about Xbox tax. And unfortunately, there is hardly anyone debunking the news to restore the truth. This is where we enter into a more general media problem.

I know that you often reestablish certain truths on Twitter, but strangely this kind of debunk is rarely relayed, only fake news remains! It makes more clicks I guess !