Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

Courtesy Gamespot

It has been reported that sales of the Playstation 2 console have exceeded 5 million and are continuing to increase, particularly with the holiday season. The article leaves much to the reader, however, about how this will affect game releases in the UK.

----------

I know from our UK forumgoers that very rarely does a game get a release in the UK before it does the US, let alone at the same time as the US. This news should demonstrate to game producers that the UK is a bigtime market for games and there's no reason to put off a UK release until later. All it does is frustrate gamers and make them lose confidence in the developers. The only game I can think of off the top of my head that was released in the UK before the US was FF:Origins. The only other game that I can think of that had an excuse for a delayed European release was FF9, where some dialogue was changed to add the UK's unnecessary vowels and all that jazz. What does everyone else think?

--------------------

Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Yeah, I'm not from the UK, or from Europe for that matter, but they should release games at the same time as the US.

Quote

some dialogue was changed to add the UK's unnecessary vowels and all that jazz

Of course, I can see why they would need to change some of the vowels for the UK release. They (Europeans) speak English, and Americans speak American.

--------------------

Wow. 1,000 posts.

I miss you all now that I'm in boarding school! ;_;

Why wouldn't they want to release in the UK? All it means is more money for them.

Quote (Neal @ 17th December 2003 12:18)

some dialogue was changed to add the UK's unnecessary vowels and all that jazz

That actually has a point. Sometimes when I read UK-English, Australian-English, etc, sometimes I have a hard time getting through it because the word registers as something else, because I want to change the pronounciation. It's probably the same for many of them when it comes to reading American-English. It's easier to enjoy a game when you're reading it correctly.

--------------------

"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

5 Million?! That's equivelant to the ENITRE population of Scotland owning one of sony's little black boxes that resemble toasters....

Hopefully, with 5 million brits with PS2's, they'll stop releasing the games months late.
we waited a YEAR for FF10. And we'll wait 6-9 months for FF X-2

PS- I know a gmae that was released in Britain before America: Fire Warrior. Then again, it Was made in Nottingham...

--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

....Its not really that simple, the Uk is part of the European market, which has many different languages (English, German, French, Spanish etc). So games have to be translated, into many languages not just one, this slows the process down alot, sure theres still no sign of FFXI, and FFX-2 is only coming out next month. This is the main reason for UK delays, as for 5 million, I'd say theres maybe more, I remember reading an article somewhere, that the Uk gamers buy more games (population %) than any other games market, even Japan, but then again 99.9% of all statistics are made up (including this one ).
eden
PS:Hello by the way

--------------------

The body is but a vessel for the soul,
A puppet which bends to the souls tyranny,
And lo, the body is not eternal, for it must feed on the flesh of others,
Lest it return to the dust whence it came.
Therefore must the soul deceive, despise, and murder men".
A.J.Durai

I haven't played any Square stuff since FF9, but in the past, the UK version has only contained English text (although FF9 was British English which, while nice to see for a change, probably wasted time before its release). This entire attitude game publishers seem to have now of treating Europe and the UK as indistinguishable is extremely irritating. Why didn't we get Chrono Cross? Officially, if I remember correctly, they didn't want to translate all the American dialects into European languages.

Hello, Square. In the UK, we can read “American”.

It's not like we have to wait years for TV shows to be translated (in fact, it seems the USA gets the wait there, since there's some freakish insistence on remaking British shows badly before showing them there instead of just letting the original fly.)

Honestly. Still, at least we're doing better than the Nintendo era, when SoM was the only Square game to make it here at all. I don't know if it's Square or Sony who is responsible for that.