European PlayStation Store users, like European users of any videogame platform, are frustrated. It’s the same old story — Europeans get shafted with games arriving late, or simply not at all, and they don’t like it. The PAL PlayStation Store looks weak compared to the others, and Sony has responded by pointing fingers at the people we should be angry at.
“We are committed to working very hard to ensure that our first-party content (the games created by our own Sony Computer Entertainment development teams) is published across all the PlayStation-Stores, simultaneously,” explains European PlayStation Store manager Angela Madronero. “The decision about whether and when to release a game for sale is in the hands of the individual publisher (companies like Capcom, EA, Konami, Ubisoft, etc.).
“There are many reasons why our third party partners may not be able to launch content in one region on a particular time/date; this may be due to technical glitches, digital rights issues, localization requirements etc. So the issues are a little more complex than may first appear.
“We know that there is a lot of frustration when content is released on one store but not another. I can confirm that from a PlayStation Store point of view, we are committed to supporting our third party partners in bringing as much content as possible to the European Store.”
It’s annoying that European consumers get shafted on such a consistent basis, especially as the Internet moves us further and further toward a fully global market. This kind of nonsense flew back when gamers were ignorant of other territories, but now Europeans get to see what Japan and America enjoys, and they want a slice of it. What’s worse is the fact that nobody ever assumes responsibility for it.
