PlayStation 3 to Launch in March 2007 in Europe According to Spong

[Shifty Geezer]

IIRC, Europe is seen as slightly less attractive than Japan or US because it costs more to adapt games/manuals/marketing stuff... to multiple languages. Not to mention our great 50Hz mode for old TV sets...

I've never really understood that though. There's a much larger market than Japan, and localisation only needs some text translation, and perhaps some UI graphics being redrawn. If you factor these into initial development it's not a lot of extra work required at all, for a much bigger market. I can only assume it's more awkward regional legal issues that deter development.

 

[Corwin_B]

I've never really understood that though. There's a much larger market than Japan, and localisation only needs some text translation, and perhaps some UI graphics being redrawn. If you factor these into initial development it's not a lot of extra work required at all, for a much bigger market. I can only assume it's more awkward regional legal issues that deter development.

I agree that the cost for purely translating a game isn't that high on the development size, but you also lose a lot of the volume discount you get for manufacturing/packaging. Also marketing becomes a pretty big budget.

 

[Bobbler]

I've never really understood that though. There's a much larger market than Japan, and localisation only needs some text translation, and perhaps some UI graphics being redrawn. If you factor these into initial development it's not a lot of extra work required at all, for a much bigger market. I can only assume it's more awkward regional legal issues that deter development.

You're also dealing with half a dozen different sets of laws and distribution systems. It costs and ends up being a bit of a hassle. Per console sold its a lot more work in Europe than it is in the US or JP (it's like that for a lot of things though) -- The fact that Europe consists of quite a few mid population countries vs a single fairly large one makes it tricky sometimes. Launching in europe probably involves quite a bit of logistics work (like launching worldwide, except on a smaller scale).

For example: Instead of MS just giving tons and tons of X360's to Gamestop in the US and let them ship them around, MS would have to send a lesser amount to a dozen different places (whichever retailers for whichever countries)... They also have to worry about a dozen different manuals and a few different langauges, and different government's import laws, etc, etc.

Europe should just be one super-country!

 

[London Geezer]

Europe should just be one super-country!

Heh, they're working on it... For bad or for good...

 

[blakjedi]

Its not the system that matters... its the games....

The system with the most games the most people want to play wins, no matter when its released.

IMO unless MS gets the lead out, they should be afraid of PS3 whenever it drops (if the claims of games with GoW level graphics are available at launch) the whole game is up in the air at that point.

 

[expletive]

Its not the system that matters... its the games....

The system with the most games the most people want to play wins, no matter when its released.

IMO unless MS gets the lead out, they should be afraid of PS3 whenever it drops (if the claims of games with GoW level graphics are available at launch) the whole game is up in the air at that point.

Agreed but I think having a hardware 'lead' directly impacts the games.

When publishers are making decisions on what platform(s) to support, installed base is probably at the top of their list. MS' strategy of launching first was probably to take what was an obvious decision (i.e. go to the PS3) for publishers and make it more even.

The 360 may have a several million unit lead for awhile so i htink the idea was to get that critical mass of insalled unts and software publishers early on in this gen in the hopes that it would snowball for them quickly, making htem very competitive with Sony throughout this gen.

 

[scooby_dooby]

You're also dealing with half a dozen different sets of laws and distribution systems. It costs and ends up being a bit of a hassle. Per console sold its a lot more work in Europe than it is in the US or JP (it's like that for a lot of things though) --

It's hard to compare EU and JPN directly because they are such different markets. If I had say a new Need for Speed, or some new WW2 style shooter, the EU will be a much much bigger market than JPN, if I had some quirky pet simulator or a no so mainstream JRPG than jpn would be the much bigger market.

Really depends on the games, I think that's how most publishers would decide how they 'rank' them in terms of purchasing power or size, and it may change from game to game.