Europe Sucks for Gamers

Living in Europe and being a gamer can so annoying. North America and Japan get collector's editions of games and even games that are never seen anywhere in Europe. The region coding that is put into consoles and games prevents importing these games for play on any console outside that region.

Super Street Fighter 4 is out later this month and there is a nice collector's edition available but it's not being released in the UK.

I've just come across a nice little game called BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. I then find out it'd been out in Japan and North America since June 2009 whilst us Europeans have only just got it (April 2010). To make it worse there's a sequel due out in Japan and North American in June! How long will Europe have to wait for that?

Dragon Age: Origins has just had a nice expansion pack, Dragon Age: Origins Awakening, released for it and I was looking forward to picking up a copy on disc for PS3. I then discover that whilst everywhere else in the world can buy the disc or download it to their PS3 us Europeans only get the option to download it and at a high price. Yet PC and Xbox 360 owners can buy the disc and download it in Europe and it's cheaper it is on PS3!

It's things like this that insight so many people to pirate and import console and software. By restricting certain products to certain countries or regions forces people to do whatever it takes in order to get what they want. In many cases this results in illegally downloading the product.

It really pisses me off when I see special editions of my favourite games released in other countries and not in my own. The game producers complain about piracy saying it's "killing the industry" but whilst they're making games available in some regions with extras or months earlier then piracy will continue.

I personally don't pirate software. I prefer to have an officially released hard copy of any media but I can see why people do it.