An Atlantean Triumvirate, Ghosts of the Past, The Centre Cannot Hold
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"In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship."
It's the US one really for me - for example gamecube games in the states are only 20 dollars now, yet they're still 35 quid in the UK. 20 dollars =~ 10-12 quid, well under the threshold for import duty so you've just got shipping at around 6 dollars. Total price =~ 15 quid, still well under half the price of getting them in the UK.
I know that there a number of quality games for the Saturn that never saw the light of day over here, and I'm glad I had mine chipped.
There are also some games released in the US for the Playstation that aren't available over here that I'm interested in... it's just quite annoying that they choose to limit our choice like this.
But for some reason, they don't region-lock handheld consoles?
True, the UK IS pricier, but it's the old PITA/saving equation.
If you get an import Wii you're tied to importing the games. If you chip it, you've just invalidated the warranty on £180 pounds worth of kit... plus there's the cost of the actual chipping... IF they ever manage it.
a lot of good games never get released in the UK. i've recently finished re-playing an illegal, warezed SNES ROM of a Squaresoft RPG which was only ever released in the USA and Japan - and it's without a doubt their finest work. once upon a time region locking was a neccessity for technical reasons (e.g. 50Hz/60Hz, differing resolutions, etc) but it's now only in place for market-control reasons.
ever bought a DVD abroad, and gone "oh well, i don't see a problem" at being unable to play it on a region 2 (UK) player?
The problem is Nintendo said the Wii would be cheap and region free on several different occasions. Now it appears that neither of these statements were true. I'l still get one but it is annoying.
I agree. But then, if you had a gloabl market place, wouldn;t you want some control over the content?
Don't forget that even game written in the US, regardless of games written in Japan, still need localisation before release. Sure, the US to UK localisation is a minimal cost but take a Japanese game. Re-doing the dialogue, the text etc takes a lot of time... depending on the game, the actual code may well have to be re-written at to accomodate unfamiliar foreign character sets. Given that my game is going to need MORE money spending on it before it's released in a foreign country, I'd want to make sure I wasn't losing sales prior to an official launch or it's just not worth bothering...
Nope. Why would I? My DVD player is back in the UK... why would I want to buy a German over dubbed version of a film I can get in English back at home?
And finally....
Sorry Hex, but this is no different from the previous arguments in this thread about not being able to get a game on the Saturn.
What you're saying is that you don't like the region locking on this NEW machine because you couldn't play a game on the SNES, which is like, 13 years old? Sorry dude but there's no logic in that.
Markets change, demographics change and the world is much more of an open market to manufacturers than it was before.
In fact, would anyone like to chip in with an example of a Wii game that's coming out in the US and Japan and NOT in the UK?
they're crappy examples, but comparing http://ms.nintendo-europe.com/wii/?s...es.html&l=enGB to http://wii.nintendo.com/games_list.html yields:
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
Elebits
Ice Age 2
Metal Slug Anthology
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Prince of Persia
Rampage: Total Destruction
Rapala Tournament Fishing
Sidewinder
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Barnyard
The Godfather
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
i haven't tried running the same comparison with Japan, and the list obviously contains a lot of **** - but the number is >0 (and includes some titles i like the sound of, such as elebits)
good guess
my point isn't about old games (though i'm willing to take cash bets that should CT appear on Virtual Console, us yurpeans will be excluded from it)
there *will* be games for wii that don't get released in the UK and are worth having
hell, mr. haywood here is ignoring the lack of "Katamari Damacy" in the UK, despite his glowing review of the sequel
good games sometimes don't get UK releases. in a world where i can buy things globally, from music to wives, i think an arbitrary "sorry, we don't like you, feck off" is somewhat harsh. nobody would have cared about this topic if there hadn't been rumblings about the machine being multi-region - it's the sonyesque backtracking that really annoys
hear hear
even if you aren't interested in the titles (listed) not receiving a european release, there will be people who are for whom this will make a difference
Hehe, but the thing is, mr Hex, despite a quick search of the forums, I don't see anyone actually bemoaning the lack of KD in the UK.
What I mean is, the game just didn't make a big enough impact to have the publishers consider a UK release... and there doesn't seem to have a been anyone wailing about it...
And now we're getting into the worrying world of economics and demand and supply...
(Edit to reply to chrism)
And I reckon that Burger King put far too much mayo and ketchup in their Whoppers... but I, with my over-sauced Whopper, am in the same minority group as those who want to play these games.
However, if there was a big fan base, you can bet the outcome would be different... (and perhaps I might get a Whopper I can eat without oozing half a tub of sauce out the back..)
Exactly - so why bother putting a region lock on in the first place if all its going to do is annoy the most loyal fan base ?
If people want to spend money on an imported game, I don’t see the issue?
Even though its almost certain that the majority of people in the UK don’t use import software (or at least, knowingly), I think that the region lockout also triggers off a mental barrier and an attitude of “If ive brought it – who are they to tell me what I can buy for it?”, even though almost everyone would never use the feature.
The publishers still get to sell the game, the big N still makes cash off the game, and the people who made the game in the first place also get a slice of the money. Please someone, just tell me what im missing here….
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