Xbox Gaming in South Africa

After 3 days of gaming indulgence, Rage Expo 2008 in Johannesburg has finally come to an end, and what an experience. Rage is the equivalent to E3 in Africa, and I don't say this lightly. This year has really shown how the console community in South Africa has grown from strength to strength. A lot of effort was put in this year to make the visitors experience something special.

Some of the highlights for me was being able to sit down and watch a presentation by the Far Cry 2 and EndWar developers. On that note, both these games are looking amazing and are living up to their hype. The EndWar presentation showed how well the game responded to the voice commands, which I must admit I was slightly sceptical about until now. Everyone I spoke to was in an agreeance that this technique will revolutionize the RTS genre for the console.

Soon-to-be released titles such as Call of Duty: World at War, Far Cry 2, Fable II and of cause Gears of War 2 were all playable. The all new Prince of Persia was also being demonstrated along with Lips, Scene It and Guitar Hero: World Tour. From my time spent with Call of Duty: World at War I've come to the conclusion that it is basically Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare but set in World War 2. This is not a terrible thing, as you shouldn't change a winning formula, but copy-paste is also frowned upon. Time will tell on that one. As for the others, Fable II looked and played as expected and I still can't help recommending it. As for the big daddy, Gears of War 2, it seems like it's on the right track and will not disappoint as one of the biggest titles in South Africa this year.

Something that was lacking from this year (but of cause it didn't phase me much), was the lack of the other 2 big consoles, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii. It looks like the marketing team made a mistake here and decided it wasn't worthwhile making a big show. Playstation 3 had a stand but it was easily over shadowed by the MegaRom and Microsoft stands and after speaking to a few people, some didn't even realise that there was one.

The final day consisted of the finals for the Guitar Hero Competition being run by MegaRom in conjunction with The Lair, along with the AGASA Gears of War and Fifa 09 finals run by the team over at Xbox-360 Forum. Huge respect to the organises, who had to deal with unforseen problems, but were able to keep things running and making a foundation for more tournaments and competitions in the future.

All in all, it was a fun 3 days, and it was a good showcase, in that South Africa can host and match the gaming and technology events hosted in America and the like. So if you missed this year, you better start planning now for next years, which should be even bigger and better!