Metroid Prime Corruption: What's Eating Ghost?

[Harrison]

There could be a couple of reasons for this delay.

The first is the obvious localisation of the game to the European market, with more languages being made available for the game interface and in game. But as always there is always the argument that the US version is in English so why not release it in all English speaking territories at the same time (UK, Aus, NZ etc)? The answer to that is to prevent importing. Countries and marketing both dislike the activity of importing products by purchasing them outside and having them posted in. It means each import sale is lost income to that country. For this reason games normally don't get released in an English version until all of the other EU country localisation has been completed, to try and stop importing from taking place and therefore ensure sales are made in each country.

The other reason could actually be the opposite of what you said about Halo 3. If Nintendo released the new Metroid now there is a danger that it could go relatively unnoticed outside of existing Wii owners. If they wait until Halo 3 is released, which is guaranteed to have a lot of money spent on it's marketing, Metroid being released at the same time (or shortly after) could benefit from riding the marketing wave Microsoft have already paid a lot of money out for to advertise Halo 3. It might sound a strange concept, but it can work. That is often why you see similar films released at the same time, because one production house will realise they production is much lower budget than the other, but will still gain interest from fans of similar films released at the same time.

As for Halo 3, I'm not sure it will be that popular. No one is that interested in Halo 2 on Vista because the game was so old and most had already played it on the original Xbox years ago. And I think only Xbox 360 owners will really be that interested. I cannot see it generating console sales for Microsoft in the same way the original did for the first console.

[Ghost]

Hello Harrison,

Sorry for disappearing on you again.

Regarding this topic

>The answer to that is to prevent importing. Countries and marketing both dislike the activity of importing products by purchasing them outside and having them posted in. It means each import sale is lost income to that country. For this reason games normally don't get released in an English version until all of the other EU country localisation has been completed, to try and stop importing from taking place and therefore ensure sales are made in each country.


Heh, not very typical of me but in this case I say "Screw Them".
As a 'hard core' gamer I find it rather frustrating that I have to wait like the casual gamers for a title such as these because of Region Locking.

Handheld consoles such as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP are region free but people still mostly buy the local edition of games, the more 'serious' gamers which are in a smaller number import games because they don't like to wait or because the game is not officially brought out in the said country.
Why couldn't this apply for the 'big' consoles like the Nintendo Wii as well?


Regarding the Halo thing, I hadn't thought about that explanation but still.

Well Halo 3 is still quite big so I wouldn't be surprised that it might still convince people to buy a XBOX360.

Its a bit difficult to compare PC releases with Console releases, another reason why Halo 2 also probably did so bad is because it was made so that it would only run under Vista.

[Harrison]

That is very true. Many people haven't bothered upgrading to Vista so it would effect sales of the Vista only Halo 2 badly, but I also think it is down to the game now being quite old and losing its appeal.

People have been moaning about staggered release schedules across different regions for many years now, and I don't think we are going to see an end to it any time soon. It's one of the things the fuels the more serious gamers to chip they systems and just download the games, rather than waiting for an eventual official release.

[Ghost]

Hello Harrison,

Well Microsoft really did a poor move when they made Halo 2 exclusive for Vista, I know that it was meant to 'sell' Vista to the gamers.
Quickly after it was released work already started on unofficial patches to make Halo 2 run on XP.

Also Vista is still not working properly, that is why a lot of people including me, prefer to wait when everything under it finally runs properly.
So the idea of being unable to play a game that is already several years old doesn't matter much to people then.

Perhaps Microsoft instead should have gone for a Halo 3 launch directly with its Xbox360 counterpart.
That would really attract some gamers.

Well I guess I could have a Wii converted to US format but I am not completely sure about it, I am still in doubt about the Wii in general, the only game I like for it is the mentioned Metroid Prime Corruption, for the rest it looks like a poor update to the GameCube
I have that console and I did like some games for it but it wasn't exactly the console that would conquer the market.


Well in a way I am also a bit pissed about the delay of Metroid Prime Corruption because of the loads of spoilers you can find on the internet these days.
I pretty much know all the big details about the game now.

This is my own mistake, I admit that, but if you are waiting so long for a particular game and you have to wait two months extra for it because of the countr you live in it becomes hard to resist the temptation.