Xbox Gaming in South Africa

Microsoft SA has revealed that South Africa will not get local dedicated servers for either the beta or retail launch of Gears of War 3 later this year.

Epic Games announced the addition of dedicated servers for the multiplayer mode in October last year, but until now, it was unclear as to whether Microsoft will look to introduce local dedicated servers considering that Xbox LIVE is now supported in SA.

Without local servers, SA gamers will need to connect to international servers, likely in the US or UK, adding additional latency to the multiplayer. It's worth pointing out, though, that thanks to improvements in international bandwidth in SA, as well as better netcode from developers, games utilizing international dedicated servers can still offer an enjoyable experience for locals.

We'll find out how Gears of War 3's multiplayer performs when the public multiplayer beta kicks off in April, followed by the full game on 20 September.