Here in Germany I often get angry when I notice things like
- special edition of "Pool of Radiance 2" contains soundtrack and some other things in english version, european version map, mouse mat and figure
- european version of Baldur's gate lacks the description of the (A)D&D rules almost completely
That's usually the fault of the European publisher. Australian releases are crap quality compared to the USA and the UK, discs coming in paper envelopes and manuals often only being supplied only in PDF.
- Hasbro and LucasArts decide to make "sweepstakes" for U.S. citizens only, as if no-one outside the U.S. would buy or collect Star Wars things.
International shipping is too risky and expensive. It's not worth the while. At Digital Jesters, they recently gave away a number of packs including all of their games. One of the winners was Canadian. He received a call from customs stating a $350 package was waiting for him and he was required to pay $57 in import tax to receive it. He's appealing on the grounds that no money exchanged hands, but I haven't heard the outcome yet.
- Icewind Dale soundtrack is only sold inside the U.S. (recently was issued in package containing all Black Isle RPGs)
Again, possibly a publisher thing. International publishers may not see the profit in it.
- Sierra completes the english Patch for Homeworld 2 failry fast, butr needs months for the european patch - as if they weren't interested to complete it at all
That one's not fair.
- that european patch even contains a bug resulting in a revision of that patch (which makes gamers believe that they indeed weren't interested in completing it at all ...)
That one even less.
There are exceptions to this, though. A lot of european designers do release it more locally first, often Germany or England.
Chaos League has been out for months and still hasn't reached America. They had a publisher lined up, Strategy First, who went broke. Now, I believe, the UK publisher, Digital Jesters, is releasing the game in America via another distributer.
I too get very upset with the poor quality of releases in Australia. I've started buying most of may games as imports because of this. Designers know that the biggest market is in America (or sometimes North-East Asia) and concentrate on them first. I wonder if other countries publishers are ignored until later, or if they don't make the first move and try to grab the game immediately?
