Halo: MCC matchmaking hasn’t worked in South Africa since launch, and I’ve always thought it’s due to some software issue/bug. But it seems that’s not the case (especially after testing with the latest patch, and it still doesn’t even find another player). The reason is Microsoft and 343 are actively blocking matchmaking in South Africa, which is likely affecting other smaller regions like ourselves. And just to be clear: South Africa is an official Xbox LIVE region, and the game was marketed as a multiplayer game here. Also, matchmaking worked fine in all previous iterations.
> We’ve heard from a rather reliable, trusted source that Microsoft and 343 are actively blocking South African gamers from using matchmaking. Their reasoning, we’ve been told, is that our internet infrastructure is too slow, and that by allowing us to join other players from around the globe, we’d be negatively impacting their experience.
Full story here: http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/halo-on-xbox-one-will-never-work-properly-in-south-africa/
What’s really made this worse is that Microsoft South Africa and 343 keep mentioning that they’re “looking into the problem” when asked why matchmaking hasn’t worked, when all along they knew why and were in fact the instigators.
The “logic” behind it isn’t even sound, and seems to be based on out of date data. Yes, our internet infrastructure isn’t the best, but it’s good enough, and it’s always getting better (fiber to home is becoming more common and cheaper). Many Xbox gamers have at least a 2Mbit ADSL connection, but even that’s starting to become the minority, with more and more gamers using 4Mbit or 10Mbit upwards. Our pings to the UK are around 150ms, which isn’t great, but it’s good enough for any game (and worked fine in previous Halo’s).
It’s extremely deceitful of 343 and MS to do this without being clear to gamers in the regions they’re blocking that online matchmaking wouldn’t work. And even more worrying, is that this may mean no other Halo games will ever work in South Africa or other smaller Xbox LIVE regions, yet MS will continue to market it as a multiplayer game.