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GameCube (Games) Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

Nintendo And Europe - Not Best Of Friends 56

Posted by simoniker from the continent-and-big-n-the-new-odd-couple dept.
Thanks to C+VG for their report revealing that Nintendo's e-Reader device for GBA will not be released in Europe. This official confirmation from Nintendo comes after "e-Reader was [originally] confirmed for Europe back in May", and adds to the pain of European gamers still waiting for the multi-language PAL version of Animal Crossing for the GameCube, despite the fact the PAL Australian release is now announced for October, and Aussies still get the e-Reader. Why does Nintendo continue to give consumers a raw deal in Europe?
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Nintendo And Europe - Not Best Of Friends More

Nintendo And Europe - Not Best Of Friends

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  • why? a few guesses... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MORTAR_COMBAT! ( 589963 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @09:40AM (#6732218)
    1. more liberal laws concerning reverse engineering. this could have affected the e-reader decision specifically.
    2. less perceived market. this could affect the animal crossing decision specifically.

    both of these come down to "risk" for releasing a product. there are costs for releasing a product -- returns, bugs, shelf-ware, etc. it's the reason "Futurama" isn't coming to the Cube (and they can bite my shiny metal ass over that one) -- the perceived risk for releasing the product was too high for the perceived rewards.

    • 2. less perceived market. this could affect the animal crossing decision specifically.

      I think you're wrong about that... The GameCube, to my woe, is selling quite badly here in Australia. So the fact that they are releasing it here suggests that it has nothing to do with Nintendo perceiving less of a market for it.

      I think it has more to do with Europe being so culturally diverse... They'd have to make so many localization changes (holidays and such) for every country they released it in Europe, that it

  • AC Based on Culture (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zandia ( 693416 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @10:01AM (#6732392)
    Okay, does anybody realize that Europe is one of the most multicultural areas of the world and the AC is highly based upon the culture of the users playing it? I mean do you think that everyone in the world celebrates Thanksgiving and the 4th of July? It takes time to taylor the culture in AC. This tayloring not only includes the holidays but the items too. Not only that, they would have to make it multilingual (not everyone in Europe speaks English). However, in Australia they do speak English and they only have to change/add a few holidays here and there. So, I don't think it's a personal beef with Europe. I just think Europe is a little bit more complicated place than other areas, which would take more time to produce a game for them.
    • Also remember that it's Nintendo's European offices that decide on whether to import a game, not NCL. I always thought it was weird that people would release a game for "Europe" and that's supposed to cover more than a dozen countries, with various languages. What a crock. Well... if you're European and you desperately want to play it, and you happen to speak English, pick up the American version (hopefully you have NTSC) as the localization is pretty limited, and the best holidays are the ones that are

    • Re:AC Based on Culture (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @11:38AM (#6733462) Journal
      You seem to have a very odd perception of how products are released here. You mention holidays. In holland we have "Sinterklaas" on the 5th of december, a saint who rides a white horse over the rooftops and delivers presents. Do you think a single movie, book or game has ever been redesigned to use sinterklaas instead of santa claus? Of course not. Same with many other slight variances found all over the world.

      The world today is far more global then you give people credit for. Don't forget that they also had to this work for the american version, there are a hell of a lot more differences between america and japan then between american and europe. If nintendo had a clue they would have could have done it at the same time.

      As for multilingual, this is a valid point to a certain extent. Very few games are fully translated over here. Don't forget that most of us learn english as a second language early in school and that most of popular culture comes from the US.

      Oh well great way to get people to buy your stuff. I guess they are okay with coming in third.

      • Re:AC Based on Culture (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Zandia ( 693416 )
        That is the point of the game to be taylored to the region it is being produced for. I believe I read somewhere that it took an extra six months to release AC in America to make the changes.


        I fully realize that not everything is taylored like that but this game is. Part of the fun of the game is celebrating the holidays and seeing what happens during them. (For the American Thanksgiving, you try to find a Turkey to get presents.) It's those little things that make the game special and enjoyable.
    • That may be one of the reasons, but i still think it's a shit reason. I want to get the Japanese version of the game with all the cool Japanese cultural references, but i wouldn't be able to understand what the hell i was doing. People who look at a game with a different cultural bacground as a problem instead of an interesting learning experience are fools.
    • This culture reason baffles me, as the game is getting a release in Australia. We share very few holidays with anywhere, and to make matters worse our seasons are reversed! It would be hilarious for AC to have a white christmas in the Australian version.

      What I suspect is that we'll get the US version with maybe a few changes, there's a lot of people here who want to be american anyway...
    • and the 4th of July?.
      some of us americans are forced to celebrate our independence,
      I think that people in europe would have to get up in a really good mood to celebrate the 4th of july over there.
      "good morning bed. good morning sun. good morning toothbrush"

      either that or some damned dirty hippies
  • I'd say the reason is really quite simple. It takes more effort to localize a game for Europe than it does for North America simply because of the video standard (although I'm presuming that it might be difficult to get shelf space in some countries without the game being in their native languages, I've never bothered to actually check that). So, since releases started out sparse and late, just about any European who really had an appetite for video games got accustomed to importing, which ended up cuttin

  • Nintendo Hates Europe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lewisham ( 239493 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @10:58AM (#6732804)

    Nintendo has no reason to hate Europe:

    Multi-language?
    Five main languages isn't that hard, really. You'd need five translators on the payroll. The appliances company I worked for simply used their marketing departments overseas to do the translation of their web sites and sent the translations back to the UK for input. I don't see how hard/expensive Nintendo thinks translation must be.

    Different display format?
    Aussies are quite happy with PAL as well.

    Different regional legislation?
    Slap on a blood patch for Germany. Hang on, Nintendo haven't had any blood in their games in the UK since they begun. They haven't been censoring us have they?!

    Different cultures
    This argument I simply couldn't buy. Tastes are different everywhere. UK tastes are different to US, US is different to Japan. I can't name one country that has radically different games they enjoy than the rest of Europe.

    There are only two answers. Nintendo is incompentant in Europe and arrogant towards Europe. It has always given Europe the shaft; it's not a new idea for them. Seeing as all the excuses they could come up with are as thin as Japanese paper walls, I have to say that the split must be 50:50 between the two issues. They don't need Europe, they're only the third biggest games market. They're a company trying to save cash, when in fact they're pushing themselves further over the edge by cutting out a major territory. Their business plan consists of: "If it ain't no work to convert, then ship it 6 months later and clamp down on importers in the mean time!" No joke, they sent cease and desist letters to all importers last month trying to get them all to stop selling the games that Euro Nintendo users want but can't get.

    Total. Bloody. Genius.

    • Re:Nintendo Hates Europe (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Firehawke ( 50498 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @11:19AM (#6733167) Journal
      There's only one problem with that overview. It's not just Nintendo.. Konami, Capcom, Microsoft, and Sony are little better about getting stuff over to Europe in a reasonable time. I seem to recall a number of PS1 games having really shoddy European ports with bad bordering and framerate issues.

      It's an attitude from the entire industry that Europe doesn't really matter. Japan is the most important market and everyone else can suffer for all they care. Hell, the US gets shafted more often than not with the truly innovative or good games. It's all mindset-- the Japanese don't know or care what the rest of the world wants. They'll just release what they THINK will sell, because finding out what really WOULD sell is too much effort.
      • Fair point, well made. I certainly think this is true of Konami: Where exactly is the GC version of Winning Eleven? The GC is crying out for a decent football game.

        Do you not think that Microsoft, for all the Xboxes failings, have done a pretty decent job in getting games here in an almost reasonable time? I don't recall the last time I heard someone complain that such and such was out in the US, but the game's release in Europe was any greater than about three months. Xbox Live has gotton off to a decent
        • Three months.. that's exactly how long Capcom took on their translation for Rockman X5 two years ago. Three months from Japanese to English, and it suffered horribly for it. It's funny.. they feel an urge to speed the Japanese->US adjustments, then take it very slowly for the US->Europe ones. You'd expect it to be closer to the opposite, really.

          For me, it really depends on the game. I'd be willing to wait up to about six months in some cases, but anything more than that means you're just getting scre
    • Multi-language?
      Five main languages isn't that hard, really. You'd need five translators on the payroll. The appliances company I worked for simply used their marketing departments overseas to do the translation of their web sites and sent the translations back to the UK for input. I don't see how hard/expensive Nintendo thinks translation must be.

      Given how long it takes for translations of most Japanese games, it sometimes seems like they have only 1 translator working on each game, but the reality is tha
      • Thank you for taking in my points at such length. It's nice to see people actually reading what I have to say.

        I can't say I agree with all your points, either through my own miseducation to not be able to comment further or simply don't agree as a matter of opinion, but your last comments about Nintendo Europe are interesting.

        I think it might be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. I find it difficult to believe that the same Nintendo that has someone as inspired as Shiguru Mi
        • I remember an excellent interview by well-respected (ie not plastered with EXCLUSIVE on the cover) games magazine Edge with the head of Nintendo Europe. He doggedly insisted that Pokemon Turquoise or whatever colours they're using now, should have taken precedence over AC. He truly believed they knew what the consumer wants, but only be telling them what they want. Doshin the Giant was meant to fill the gap in the GC line-up!

          Yet the 2 Pokemon games ARE still #2 and 3 on the UK charts, even if they have f
          • No, they really are arrogant and clueless.

            I remember people begging them to release Pokemon games in the UK. Nintendo Europe told them that they probably never would, because "there is no market outside of Japan for Pokemon".

            Then a television company picked up the rights to the cartoon as a schedule filler.

            To be honest, I'm not so sure of the sequence of events, but thats how I remember it.

            Any enquiry or suggestion about a game to Nintendo Europe gets stonewalled. "Check our website for updates", or som
    • Nintendo doesn't hate Europe. They aren't releasing it STRICTLY for financial reasons. If the installed base for GameCube or Game Boy Advance doesn't warrant releasing the peripheral in Europe, then they won't release it.

      So please, save the drama for your mama ... it has nothing to do with how Nintendo "feels" about Europe. It was a business decision, just like everything else they do. They focus on Europe last because they ARE the smallest of Nintendo's markets, and requires a great deal more work. W
      • My cannon wasn't aiming at the e-Reader. It looks like another crude Nintendo method of trying to extract funds out of the stagnant GBA market due to the high pricing of their carts, but that's another story.

        I agree that hate was too strong a word, but they must certainly dislike the territory, which I think is mostly their own doing. MS and Sony have never shown such contempt. They don't complain and fob off, they get it done, with or without EU legislation.

        I think Nintendo is running a risky financial

    • Multi-language?
      Five main languages isn't that hard, really. You'd need five translators on the payroll. The appliances company I worked for simply used their marketing departments overseas to do the translation of their web sites and sent the translations back to the UK for input. I don't see how hard/expensive Nintendo thinks translation must be.

      I think Nintendo knows a little better than you seeing as they have been doing it for almost two decades. Localization of video game software is a few orders of
      • Having purchased AC on import, the argument that the localisation is significantly more difficult holidays-wise appears to be very much tosh.

        There really aren't that many unique days in it, let alone country-specific. (Meteor Shower? Town day?) The special things that happen on the remaining days could easily be switched around; the 4th July fireworks on Coronation Day for example or some other equally irrelevant holiday ;)

        Switch a bit of code, rewrite some lines of text (which would have been occuring du
        • It's not just a matter of translating (which does take a long time for colloquialisms). It's also a matter of changing the code in the game, which if you ask any programmer can take a very long time.


          You may think that there aren't that many American specific holidays in there but if you look at the Japanese version there are many. You are also failing to notice that there are many countries that do have many specific holidays that they feel aren't irrelevant. So, not only would they have to resea
          • (i.e. Finding the Turkey on Thanksgiving or the candy on Halloween, both American specific holidays)
            Halloween, an American holiday? Here's a clue: It's "All Hallow's eve" and goes back to the middle ages, at least. History did not begin 200 years ago, no matter what you learned in school. And yes, Nintendo of Europe are fuckwits, as is Square. And Sony. Actually, if you're European, and you want to play console games you're basically fucked. I'm just glad I live in Japan.
            • Yes, but not everyone celebrates it the same and some don't observe the holiday at all. I have several European friends who found the American tradition odd even though they were aware of it.

              Here's another clue: I'm not as stupid nor as ethnocentric as you think I am. If you took the time to actually read and digest my post, you would know that I was trying to say that other cultures and holidays are special and they should be recognized in the game as well. I'm sorry you are just too prejudice t
    • "Multi-language?
      Five main languages isn't that hard, really. You'd need five translators on the payroll.       "

      No, you'd need 5 translators plus 5 vetters (to check the translations) plus you'd need to localize all the various holidays, etc, and make sure no implied situations are missed which would offend certain cultures.

      Look at European Telivision. It's a lot more than a language tranlation and some video format that makes or breaks a game in a market as diverse as Europe.

  • Too many cultures? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Cyhwuhx ( 594396 )
    .::: Localisation is hardly the problem. EA, Sony, Microsoft they can all handle multiple languages and the like. The problem is that Nintendo wants to do all of that internally. Whereas their competition hires other companies to do that for them. I also don't know why on Earth some people here wnat to take politcal reasons into consideration. The usual route for a game to be released here (Europe) is to be accepted by Japan as well as America. After those releases, the game is usually evaluated, in which
    • .::: Localisation is hardly the problem. EA, Sony, Microsoft they can all handle multiple languages and the like. The problem is that Nintendo wants to do all of that internally. Whereas their competition hires other companies to do that for them.

      Let's see: Microsoft decided to release untranslated (ie English-language) non-localized versions of X-Box games in Japan. Many people complain about bad PAL conversion of titles from any number of US and Japanese developers. Many companies other than Nintendo do

      • Microsoft decided to release untranslated (ie English-language) non-localized versions of X-Box games in Japan.

        You have no idea - no idea - just how badly Microsoft has fucked up in the Japanese market. X-Boxes are cheaper than Dreamcasts, and more shops sell DC games than X-Box games. Outside of Sega they have - basically - no developer support. Frankly they can't do anything to make the situation worse - I'd gamble that most people in Japan still buying X-Box games are from America originally.

  • Yes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pommaq ( 527441 ) <straffaren@sPLAN ... minus physicist> on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @11:46AM (#6733576) Homepage
    Well, this is just the most recent installment in Nintendo's campaign to shaft us Euros! They've happily been doing it for 10+ years, so it shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. Why they do it, I'm not sure. It's probably just the good ol' German censorship laws, localization (and most of us could do without localization, thank you very much), stuff like that.

    Knowing this, as soon as the cube was released in the US (more than half a year before it hit our shores, how's that for a warning sign?) I imported myself a JAP/US cube. Yeah, it's sort of a hassle having to import all my games, but there's a thriving [goblindirect.co.uk] industry [lik-sang.com] that's realized you can make a buck off this region bullshit. So now I'm a proud owner of Soul Calibur 2, F-Zero GX, Winning Eleven 6 and Mario Golf, neither of which are even CLOSE to releasing in Europe yet. Hell, WE6 probably won't even go outside Japan, seeing as footie games aren't very big in the US.
    ...but anyway, my point was - Nintendo have always been doing this, they will continue to do it, and the best you can do is try to work around it. It sucks, really; they make the best consoles, the best games, but their business decisions sometimes seem to be made by monkeys.
  • for being caught and fined for operating an illegal price-fixing cartel.

    Perhaps this is why they give Europe the cold shoulder. Because they don't have the freedom to shaft consumers financially, they're trying to convince consumers to pay higher prices anyway by starving the kiddies of their latest family-friendly fix until the pester-power meter builds up to MAX.
  • Europe has heavy taxes.
    Really it's not worth it to translate 5 different languages and all this extra crap just for a couple thousand in sales. Europe doesn't buy enough games to make it worth while.

    Australia, too.
    • Really it's not worth it to translate 5 different languages and all this extra crap just for a couple thousand in sales. Europe doesn't buy enough games to make it worth while.
      Congratulations for talking out of your arse. "Couple thousand" indeed. Damn but I'm feeling angry today. No idea why.
  • This has happened before, Nintendo released the game "Terranenigma" in Australia and Europe, yet it was never released in America. Although this is good for us Australians, I'm sick of getting games last in line. If i ran a Console Dev company, i'd release in Australia first, Japan second and america last... See how you like it.
  • C&VG has just done some backpedaling [slashdot.org] The Video Game Ombudsman [blogspot.com]
  • Wow what a change, we are actually getting games before Europe. Not just that, I was lucky enough to play F-Zero AX which is now in Sydney in the main arcade 'Galaxy' in the city. (and yes its fantastic). Has anyone in europe managed to get their hands on one?

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