🙂
Just wanted to comment on your talk about Saudi Arabia and the gaming fan base in the middle east.
There are a lot of Arabic websites out there for gaming news and discussions, just like the US ones. Some are too crowded and full of kiddy discussions, and others are targeted for those hardcore gamers who look for up-to-date gaming news and discussions. One of the most successful Arabic websites is True-Gaming.net. I'm one of the editors for the website. We publish and host several gaming media on a daily basis. For example, a Podcast (bi-weekly), online gaming magazine (monthly), and "Game Of The Week" which is featured on one of the biggest magazines on the market, and also one of the biggest TV shows in the middle east. Though when you check the traffic on the forums you will notice that we don't have a large number of members, and that's because we're kinda picky when it comes to posting and discussing professionally.
We also have places that are dedicated for gaming challenges and tournaments. Mostly for Halo, Tekken, SSB, Winning Eleven, Soul Calibur, Gears of War, and tons of other games. You can also run into a lot of XBL users from the middle east who kick serious ass in Winning Eleven and Halo 2. Believe it or not, Winning Eleven here is more popular than even in Japan and Europe. It's like crack on the PS2.
However, we're still waiting for the big three (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) to take us seriously. I know it's a risky market, but there are a lot of opportunities here that can be profited from. Nevertheless, to be totally honest, Sony is making a nice effort toward that goal. Since the middle east is considered to be Region 2, we get all the Sony published games here from the company itself, with the Europe launch that is. Like what happened with the PS3/PSP and some games. Also Microsoft officially launched the X360 in the UAE, with a party held in several places in Dubai. We managed to get an interview with one of the Execs for Microsoft down there.
Btw, some of our members are wondering about the exact location that MGS4's story takes place in, can you give us more info on that? Cause we know it's supposed to be somewhere in the middle east.
Oh, and one last thing. You said you visited the middle east for research. What country/city did you actually visit?
And keep up the good work, just wanted to update you a bit on the gaming life down here 🙂
Best regards;
Ginko
احد يبي يسلم على اهله ولا شيء؟ عادي نضيفها بعد، Hi mom, hi dad -_-
