One of the issues of being a gamer in Australia is that not every company opts to host game servers in the country, meaning that there are occasions where we don’t receive an optimal experience when playing.
Xbox Australia have announced that starting from today, Xbox One gamers will experience an “enhanced multiplayer gaming experience” with Microsoft rolling out local Xbox Live servers, bringing low pings and centralised local hosting to players around the country on select Xbox One titles. As of this post, the games which take advantage of these new servers include Forza Motorsport 5, Forza Horizon 2, Sunset Overdrive and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. This is in response to demands from the Xbox community requesting locally hosted servers.
The new Xbox Live services will utilise the recently launched Azure services in Australia to deliver what they describe as “unparalleled in-game graphics and audio, alongside deeply intelligent NPC (non-player characters) and artificial intelligence”. No additional updates are required to take advantage of these servers, as supported games will automatically utilise them.
Jeremy Hinton | Business Group Lead for Interactive Entertainment at Microsoft Australia
It has been a very exciting year for both Xbox and the industry. We set out to deliver amazing experiences on the Xbox One platform, and are humbled by the support and positive response from Aussie gamers to the updates over the past 12 months. Today’s announcement of Australian based Xbox Live servers addresses the most requested feature from local gamers. We are excited to give our fans the best online gaming experience available, just in time for the Holidays.
