Again, the rest of the world is left waiting...

[Provost Harrison]

Typical...as per Civ3 and many, many other games.

You know why does it seem to be completely impossible to orchestrate a simultaneous release for these games. Especially in Europe, there should be absolutely no reason why we should have to wait, after all, it is not like the game is shipped from the US when they are all pressed over here...

So what gives this time?

[Locutus]

Quite a few shops are reporting 28/10 as release date for Europe. Considering most games are released on Tuesday in the US and on Friday in Europe, they are effectively released at the same time.

[Provost Harrison]

I've seen 4th November for the UK...hmmm...

[GeoModder]

Re: Again, the rest of the world is left waiting...

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
...it is not like the game is shipped from the US when they are all pressed over here...

The game is manufactured in Europe?

[Provost Harrison]

I would be highly surprised if they made them over there and shipped them here...the cost would be very high...

[Sava]

they are probably made in China, PH

[Locutus]

Nah, last few games I ordered all came from Ireland. Those were all published by MS though.

Dates seem to vary, it used to be Nov 4, now more and more sites are reporting Oct 28.

[alva]

Again, the rest of the world is left waiting...

It happens - though less - the other way around too.

[ulyanov]

I don't mind.

If EBgames here in Oz had said it was available within a week of the 25th I would have had a very hard time justifying ordering the pre-order version from EB online...

It's costing me about $15 more, and I would probably have pocketed that if I could get it here quick enough...

Still, it used to be 3 months and more for us Aussie to get the good stuff. Still is with some films, though p2p piracy has forced the studios hands somewhat...

[Provost Harrison]

Well if they want to combat piracy, they are going to have to learn that they can't just do it with strongarm tactics...they have to give us what they want...

[snoopy369]

I rather think they may actually manufacture some games in the US and then ship them ... cheaper than having a foreign factory. But i don't know ...

[MarkG]

there was an effort to publish simultaneously. i suppose it was not possible to produce the needed amount of copies in the limited number of days between gold (19th) and release (25th)

[lockstep]

My local software shop (Vienna, Austria) confirmed today that they will get the U.S. version on October, 28th. Amd from the look on the vender's face, I wasn't the first one to ask.

[Targonis]

The problem is generally an issue with the distribution process, not development for the most part.

Think about it, if a game is developed by a company in the USA, the first issue is to find a company to publish the game. Many companies that distribute here in the USA arn't global, so you need to have TWO distributors for the same product, if not more for a product that is being sold around the world. You also have different divisions and generally different versions depending on what country you are in.

Here in the USA, you only find an English version. Nice and simple for companies that are based over here. A European version might be English/French/German. Since that is a different version, different quality controls come into play. Also, if it's a different publisher, or even a different division of the same publisher, they may delay release since the duplication may be handled by a company in Europe instead of the USA.

While I am not in Europe, I understand the dislike of the American focus of American companies that sell to the rest of the world, including the way Americans tend to only speak English without learning German and French, let alone Spanish, Italian, and Dutch. I don't think that you would appreciate it if every game that was developed over here came in ONLY one version. The laws on content(violence and sex) are also different depending on the country, and these are things that an American company may not want to worry about during the development of a game. As a result, they leave some of these issues to the publishers to help sort out.

So, either you want seperate versions, or accept that there will be issues when it comes to distribution of different versions. Blame the publishers, because it's not the fault of the dev team.

Keep in mind that there are also issues with certification of titles in different regions. In some places you can't have red blood in a game, so green blood has to be put in only for countries that have that sort of thing. Here in the USA, nudity and sex are the things that need to be removed while violence is all over the place. in Europe, to an extent it might be the other way around. It's fortunate that Civilization doesn't need to worry about this, but it's a part of the issue with "global releases". Check games made by Lionhead studios if you want to see more games that arn't focused on distribution in the USA because they are based in the UK.

[FrostyBoy]

Make the game downloadable worldwide simultanously.

Many problems solved.