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Middle East Sees Surge In Console Use

Posted by simoniker on from the antartica-also-doubled-console-base-to-two dept.

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their report on the expansion of the traditionally quiet videogame market in the Middle East, covering Sony's announcement that "...combined sales of the PSone and PS2 have broken the 3 million unit mark... making the region into the fastest growing games market in the world - with sales expected to double for PS2 next year." The article also, interestingly, points out: "Sony's success in the area lends further weight to Europe's claim to be the world's largest games market."

5 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. PS2 and xbox in Israel by NaveWeiss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know about other countries around here, but nobody's officially importing xboxes to Israel. You can find it in some Israeli auction sites but it's not too useful because nobody's renting games for it.

    PS2, on the other hand, is very common here, I believe. They rent games for it in every Blockbuster branch.

    (hmm.. it reminds me I should call that girl that invited me to her house where we played Tekken, long ago)

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  2. PS2's for misiles by cybergrue · · Score: 4, Funny
    Rmember that story a couple of years back about how Iraq was trying to acquire PS2's as components for missile guidence systems. PlayStation 2: Iraq Scores Hordes of PS2s at US Gamers' Expense

    I wonder how many units this acounted for. Then again maybe this acounted for some of these units as well. Buy Bush a PlayStation 2

  3. sorry but middle east!=europe. by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    here is europe and here is asia, which middle east belongs to. the article says that they(console companies) usually group the projections for europe and middle east together because it has not been a major area in sales before and is not very likely to become major area even in the light of these sales. these middle-east sales increase what europes sales look in the figures, but at the same time they twist those figures to be inaccurate if you consider them to be just europes sales.

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    1. Re:sorry but middle east!=europe. by Dot.Com.CEO · · Score: 2, Informative

      In every global company there is this thing called EMEA (European and Middle Eastern Area). It has become global practice in multinationals to count EMEA earnings, as opposed to European, EU, Middle Eastern etc. It has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with management practices. In short, the middle east is too small a market (monetarily speaking) to warrant its structural independence and whoever gets to manage Europe manages the Middle East as well. I have actually never met someone who worked for a multinational in such a capacity who was a European area manager as opposed to EMEA. Sony, of course, might be an exception but I somehow doubt it.

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  4. Re:The culture infection begins! by WildBeast · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually they are doing all that.