《BioShock》印度跳票引发网上暴动

Things have been heating up lately both here at 360Indians and the Xbox.com India forums; tensions flaring, Xbox forum accounts being banned, personal attacks back and forth between Micosoft India execs and console owners. And its all for one game – Bioshock.

It all started with news that Bioshock would not release in India before late September or early October. This came as a rude shock to everyone and understandably so since this game has got the most impressive reviews in recent memory. More importantly, Mohit Anand (Country Manager, Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division, Microsoft India) said himself in a post on Xbox.com that Bioshock would release here inline with worldwide release dates (August 21 for the US and August 24 for Europe).

Getting personal

Understandably, the change in stance led to a lot of anger at the forums here and on Xbox.com. Now, its not uncommon to see angry consumers launch personal attacks against company executives, but how often do you see company executives give as good as they get and resort to personal attacks against the consumer? Some fiery exchanges between Microsoft’s Mohit Anand and Xbox.com member BabyZelda ended with BabyZelda being banned from the forums and the rest of us still having to scramble to various online retailers for our copies of Bioshock.

I soon received a damage-control phone call from Mohit Anand. He explained to me the intricacies of game distribution, third party publishing and import and customs procedures. While I appreciate him getting in touch with me, that didn’t make me feel any better about not having Bioshock or other third party games that never made their way here (Rainbow Six Vegas, Dirt, etc).

In India, we’re required to pay Rs 27,750 (over US$ 650) for a Pro Xbox 360 and almost a year after launch we still don’t have the Xbox LIVE service here. After all this, it’s very hard for Xbox 360 gamers in India to sympathise with Microsoft’s inability to negotiate with publishers for games. So after an hour-long chat with Mohit, we’re right back where we started – no Bioshock till October.

——由于印度的XO玩家与当地的微软娱乐部门积怨甚深，在得知《BioShock》印度首发日期推迟至九月底/10月初后，360Indians论坛和Xbox.com印度分舵针对微软的印度管理层展开了一场激烈的口诛笔伐，结局是玩家帐户被封，而微软管理层以罕见的，同样激烈的言辞回敬玩家，前不久这位高层人士还放话说《BioShock》在印首发日期与欧洲发布期一致。

自XO豪华版以27750卢比的天价在印首发以来（折合650美元），印度玩家自我感觉就是后娘养的，不仅XO首发比别人晚，发布至今也未开通Live服务，且很多大作——比如彩虹六号：Vegas和Dirt，也难觅踪影。