Xbox Australia‘s given gamers an early Christmas present with the unveiling of locally hosted Xbox Live servers, promising both low pings and centralised local hosting for Australian gamers on a bunch of Xbox One titles.

Gamers in Australia and New Zealand have been asking for local multiplayer servers for some time now, and Microsoft has delivered. The update’s the latest in “nearly 100 updates” that have rolled out for the console since its launch just over 12 months ago – and the company is proud to report that many of these changes are in direct response to Xbox community feedback.

Jeremy Hinton, Business Group Lead for Interactive Entertainment at Microsoft Australia explains:

It has been a very exciting year for both Xbox and the industry. We set out to deliver amazing experiences on the Xbox One platform, and are humbled by the support and positive response from Aussie gamers to the updates over the past 12 months. Today’s announcement of Australian based Xbox Live servers addresses the most requested feature from local gamers. We are excited to give our fans the best online gaming experience available, just in time for the Holidays.

The servers themselves are hosted in Australian datacentres (we’re assuming Sydney, but MS is remaining tightlipped), which means “lightning quick” connection speeds for Aussie gamers, as well as improved reliability for many games.

If you’re looking to take advantage of the new local content, the best part is that you don’t have to do a single thing differently. You’ll automatically switch from international servers and peer-to-peer connections onto the new Australian Xbox Live servers. This will reduce host migrations, lag and drop-outs, giving you a “more enjoyable and reliable multiplayer gaming experience”.

At this stage, it’s only been rolled out for a handful of games – including Forza Motorsport 5, Forza Horizon 2, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Sunset Overdrive, but support for more titles will be added in the future.