Microsoft says it won’t stop selling Xbox consoles in Saudi Arabia, addressing recent rumours that the company has plans to pull consoles from retail stores in the country. Yesterday, rumours surfaced from TrueGaming co-founder Mohammed Albsimi that Microsoft would soon stop selling consoles in Saudi Arabia.
Microsoft provided IGN with a statement on the matter, clarifying the rumours and stating that Xbox will continue to sell consoles in Saudi Arabia after all. “Xbox devices are available in all current Xbox hardware supported countries, including Saudi Arabia,” said Xbox chief consumer sales officer Ami Silverman. “Console availability may vary by country but Xbox games can be played on consoles, PCs and on phones, tablets or TVs where Xbox Cloud Gaming is available.”
It doesn’t seem like Xbox has any plans to stop selling consoles in Saudi Arabia, which is great news for gamers in the country. At the moment, Sony’s PS5 is outselling the Xbox Series X/S in several regions around the world. It wouldn’t make sense for Microsoft to suddenly start pulling support of its hardware from countries, at least not at this stage.
Xbox has had quite a rocky year. Back in July, reports surfaced that Xbox might stop marketing consoles in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. While this isn’t the same as stopping the sale of Xbox consoles entirely, it could’ve been an early indication that Microsoft was shifting its strategy to focus on its main market, the US.
Microsoft also faced a bit of backlash from the gaming community when it announced in July that it Xbox Game Pass would be getting a price hike along with new tiers that essentially gives subscribers more options, but limits newer day one releases to the premium tiers – a change from the past subscription model which gave all Game Pass users the same access to new releases and exclusives.
Source: IGN
