So, here I am living in Denmark, it’s Europe for most of the non-european people. I hardly believe anyone but Germany, Sweden, Norway and perhaps even UK know about us.
What frustrates the nutcase out of me, is when I have to wait x amount of months for a game release, when the japanese people gets it before everyone else. I’m not saying it’s racial discrimination, but we should sure be thinking about it at least.
There has been quite some handfull other releases that was global. Now which game am I talking about, and why does it frustrate the nutcase out of me? Final Fantasy XIII.
Yes, I’m one of Denmarks biggest Final Fantasy fans, nerds, gamers, know-it-all, whatever. I’ve played them all, done it all, any variations and serveral times in any game with just one single character being levelled up or at low levels. You say it, I’ve done 99% of it. What I haven’t, is played Final Fantasy XIII yet, yet the Japanese and probably some chinese people are enjoying their silly lives playing it. And that makes me a very angry person.
As far I’ve been told and know, the game is 100% dubbed in english/american, which means there’s no extra time needed to translate the entire story, and get the voice-casting done for it, also the subtitles have already been made months prior to release in Japan. So what was the biggest problem of a simultaneous release, I can only contemplate why Square-Enix was unable to produce said type release. Newer games like Darksiders: Wrath of War, Bayonetta all have/had a global-release, so why not Final Fantasy XIII?
One of the reasons I can figure out would be that Square-Enix wanted to throw an ‘hype’ effect, that it was released in Japan first, then all the global game reviewing sites, and ‘Kipz Syndicates Game dept. best friend Kotaku would have reviews and much more about it. But how does that solve my problem, I’m still the person that has to wait three months for a game. And by then, more than 10.000/1.000.000 japanese people have already beaten it on the hardest difficulty possible, and other variations. By then, the webz is scourged by guides, hints & tricks pages for all new/old FFXIII players to read. The challenge will be gone, ofcourse I can refrain from using said sites. However all the excitement is gone, hyping games by producing a non-global release can also kill it in a certain way. We’ve even seen global-released games go down the drain an instant, like Crysis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was near-instant killed by public reviewers.
Does that makes ‘hype’ a bad thing?
No, hype is just a way to get attention on the product, Final Fantasy gets their own hype for being, yes Final Fantasy. Everyone that has been exposed to it, knows how great an impact it is to anyone, just like Halo 3 is to any 10 year old, disposeable american kid, that yells into their Xbox 360 headset everytime they get their hiney raped by a lightsaber-sword-thingamajig. But all this still leaves me waiting 3 months for the bloody game, not to mention the pre-release waiting hours! Now don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have to spend alot of time waiting for the designers/developers to get the game made right, however waiting for the game to be released, while a bunch of people are playing it like mad in a different part of the world, is just not right to me.
Why don’t you just buy a japanese PS3?
A) I don’t have the money.
B) I can’t read/understand japanese.
C) Are you retarded – that was rhetorical, I know you are.
Why in the world would I want another console in my house of the same kind, just because it’s labeled with JAP instead of EU or US, while not saying those who do are jocks or nutcases, I personally don’t want that, which is why I think any game should be globally released on the same day, while timezones does differ, that’s a minor bloody detail!
What can I do, for globally released games?
The best anyone can do is probably issue the problem to the game publishers, however I doubt they pay any heed to it, as they’re only worried about one thing, money. (And/or their penis/vagina(and boobs) if they have any.) Despite RAEG tiem, the gaming generation has shifted, and simultaneous releases are still getting more widely accepted amongst the publishers, at least Electronics Art has their global releases set, if they actually makes anything besides sporting, Sims (Yuck!) games that are worth playing. (Army of Two: 40th Day PLEASE!) Till then, I guess I’ll have to settle with it and wait for it, hey the experience may actually improve, but I doubt it. It’s the same game no matter how much post-release time I have to wait for it. In the meanwhile anyone waiting for their games can use CollegeHumor or Something Awful to improve their life quality.
