I'm crossposting this from my own blog; A Gamer's Mind. (<- Original post)

I'm no gossip.

I don't like saying things if I can't back them up. However, something caught my eye today when I bought Patapon 2. Yes, Sony's trial "PSN-only retail game" which has already caused quite a bit of speculation that Sony's testing the waters for a possible digital distribution only handheld is even moreso backed by what the actual download ticket says on the back of it. Upon turning the ticket over and reading what's on the back, I came across this:


"Memory stick required for PSP 1000 - 3000 series. (610MB required)"

But why would it specifically say "1000-3000 series?" The only PSPs that are out are the 1000, 2000, and 3000, right? For now, at least...

You can't really confirm anything for this, obviously. As far as we know, this might have been something to tell DBZ fans that their PSP is not a PSP-9001 series for all I care. (Rim-shot) But really, I don't really see the need to specifically state which PSP models require a memory card if all current models of the system require one, which could mean one thing...

...Sony's E3 this year might be a bit interesting on the handheld front if this keeps up. How much longer do you think they'll keep denying this?

It's not hard for someone like me to turn a blind eye to what's happening outside North America as far as gamers go. I haven't really been keeping my eye on any major gaming blogs until a week ago, so it used to be that I just thought that Europe got the short end of the stick whenever it came down to releases. Running a small forum that was made up of probably just as many European gamers as there were American ones, that was the only complaint I heard from them.

Reading DTOID in the past week opened me up to the reality that is European gaming: Europe is the proverbial toilet of game manufacturers it is, and that was confirmed by three stories, as reported by DTOID in the past 24 hours. I thought I'd recap the three and put them all together:

First, we had Jim Sterling's story about Nintendo bullshitting their way through the delay in the European release for Brawl. Because a translation is hard? Heck, I've seen them release big RPGs only about two or three months after their American counterpart. For all the different languages spoken in Europe that's quite a job, but for Brawl? I think what Jim said in his article really hits on a point:

"Nintendo's Laurent Fischer explained [the "difficult" translation] was the reason why Brawl was taking so long, despite the fact that it takes most Japanese developers about a month to do (rather than Nintendo's six) and despite the fact that most studios can handle near-worldwide release dates these days. Games like GTA IV and MGS4 must simply be easier to localize than Smash Bros. It all makes sense now!"
-Jim Sterling

Honestly, I've noticed Nintendo doing a similar thing between Japanese and NA releases as well. Why does it take them so long when there are other development studios that can release these games in every region within a week of each other? It just doesn't make sense at all. I know, Nintendo is not just a developer but a console manufacturer, but you think that means that they would have more experience, right? Right now, I can only think of two companies that take about as long or longer for outside Japan releases: Namco Bandai (Mainly with Tales games, IF said tales games come out outside of Japan at all) and Square Enix.

Sure, maybe they have to go through a few hundred trophies and translate them into five or six different languages, but still, what's to be translated past the trophies? Menu screens? That's it. How big is Nintendo of Europe's localization team; one guy? Half a guy? What a joke.

Then, we have another Story from Jim about the European MGS4 PS3 bundle. Not much of an explanation needed here, just the gaming industry shitting on Europe as they've been prone on doing it seems. As if not getting the limited edition PS3 as part of the bundle on that, they're not getting dualshock 3's either? Heck, at least give me the controllers! I sure hope Europe realizes this and just... stays away from this.

And, last, but definitely not least, Jim had one last article for us with Microsof... er... Micro$oft as most tech geeks like me have come to see them as, pulling the stinker to best all stinkers with the 360. ...Not that we didn't expect MS to make the biggest stinker of them all.

Out of all three of these, this one pisses me off the most. Why? Well... it's obvious; Microsoft isn't just lying about what's inside each 360 box in Europe, it can pretty much be considered a scam. Usually, you know if you're buying new or refurbished. If this rumor is true, MS is tricking all of Europe into thinking they're buying new systems, when really they've just been fixed up and repackaged. Heck, the story about the one with blood stains on it? Yea. All the commenters on that article are calling it the AIDSBOX360 with good reason. Heck, I certainly hope that if someone were to contract AIDS by coming in contact with a blood stain on a refurbished Euro 360 (which, from what I have heard, is impossible anyway, so there's no harm there.) that MS gets shut down. We need everyone's least favorite computer monopoly outta here. Seriously. Hearing stuff likes this makes me mad that developers only make games compatible with a shitty bloatware OS with security holes everywhere that we all like to call Windows.

Now, as I have obviously made clear at the beginning, I'm no European. Heck, I'm closer to Asia than I am to Europe. All I know is that if this was happening here, I wouldn't be able to live with it. Europeans certainly don't deserve to have to put up with it either.

Will the gaming industry realize soon that they actually have money to be made in Europe? I sure hope so, but until then I think it's time that Europeans give them a good reminder that they are not the industry's toilet.

An odd name, especially for a male nontheless, but behind its cuteseyness I guess it's worn on me.

But anyways, as a newer member of the DTOID community I might as well go into a bit of detail of my gaming history.

Having been born in 1984 I was one of those kids who started playing video games at a really early age. It really hasn't affected my gaming skill all that much, (I suck) but when I was born my parents had both an Intellivision and an Atari 2600, as I came into the world not long after the video game crash of the early 80s. The 2600 stuck with me for a really long time; By no means was I good at it but I enjoyed playing it more than I did the NES, although this was most likely because I didn't have to ask to play it.

I've always gone with handhelds over consoles. I got a GB for Christmas back in 1993 and it was the only thing I played. The old NES eventually broke down and my dad had bought a Genesis that didn't get played all that much. Back then I was really into sports games and flight sims. Probably my worst gaming moment came in the mid 1990s when my sister erased my 100%+ save file in Donkey Kong Land 3. Man, I was one pissed off kid, and when I got pissed off back then, I got PISSED.

I was out of the console loop for a long time. I got a GB Color for Christmas in 1998, not too long after its launch, and was probably one of the more worn handhelds that I owned. Pokémon, as much as I don't always like to admit, was my first RPG and really got me into the genre. (The Lufia and Tales series top my list of favorite RPG series out there.) When I bought my Game Boy Advance in 2003 it was like a whole goldmine of new RPGs for me to play. It was around that same time that my father had bought the family a PS2 for christmas. I didn't really care much though because, admittedly, I was a pretty bad Nintendo fanboy back in the days. (Not so much anymore.) It was probably the first console the family had in a few years, and I was able to obtain a Gamecube around Christmas 2004. I had been away from consoles for so long it honestly was weird for me to be playing a system where the controller wasn't part of the actual system itself. I eventually got back into the console groove, though, and to be honestly I loved my gamecube. I know it was the bottom of its generation and it had a lot of shortcomings but it was good enough to keep me going.

The DS came around for me in 2006, and today it's probably the only thing I've owned that has a touch screen and a stylus that's lasted over a year for me. (Despite me using my DS way way more than I ever used a palmOS.) Mariokart got me instantly hooked on the system, and the Ace Attorney series probably became my favorite series available on the system. Add the recently released gem known as The World Ends With You and my DS collection is a tad small, but well-rounded.

My latest addition to my gaming family came only about a week ago, when I finally decided to give in and splurge on a Wii. All I know is that in a couple of days I will most likely have my parents on my case about it, but that's to be expected. I'm definitely not one of the richest people out there.

Hopefully this won't be my only post here. Besides all the other blogs I've created at other sites I think I'll have to choose between a couple that would be worth keeping and go with them, but I'm hoping to get into the string of things. I've blogged before and like typing up what's on my mind about certain things, so I'll try to get some activity in on this one.