Publishers Play The Blame Game

As we still wait for Chun-Li and her gang, Sony takes the blame.
Published 20/01/2009 at 13:07 by djhsecondnature

Whilst I write up another article, hoping not to be beaten to the punch by lightning fingers nofi (ask him for his full name), feeling like the back end of a horse having been ill since the end of last week and eating my first scone in about three years…where am I going with this? Oh yeah, the news.

As we wait and scream for the release of many absent titles that have yet to reach our spindly PSN Store, publishers have placed the blame squarely on Sony. Whilst titles like Penny Arcade Adventures, Lumines and Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix have been on other regions stores for months, we still have nothing more than an ETA for a release date.

According to Joel De Young, COO of Penny Arcade, this is down to Sony’s regional processing. ”Sony’s process for getting titles on PSN varies in North America, Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia,” he responded when asked by British Gaming over the ongoing delays. Capcom on the other hand, were a little more reserved in their reply, saying: ”That’s a question better directed at the console manufacturers themselves”.

When they quizzed Sony Europe’s PlayStation Network PR manager what the cause of the delays were, he said that, “this has been an ongoing issue and we’re doing our best to resolve it.”

Either way, I don’t really care, just sort it out and release the games over here. Now.

Comments

Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.


  1. Does this infer that SCEE are a bit slow? Shocker


    • lol. yep :)


    • I believe its to do with SCEE being a bunch of cnuts (crunchy nuts?)

      TheRook21


  2. I’ve heard this from a number of people. Naturally I’m not saying who, but can confirm that the process can be a bit lengthy. Still, bug free, right?


    • You’ve heard about your lightning fingers? I thought it was common knowledge. lol


  3. It’s a shame! I think Central Trains could get content to Europe Psn faster than SCEE. Still, I’m no expert and I’m sure they are working at full capacity.


  4. I think the newsworthyness of this story comes from the fact that SCEE have actually commented on their slowness, other than just saying “Localisation!”


  5. i read an interesting comment from a reader on N4G who said he downloaded street fighter II HD from the us store, only to find when it reached his PS3 in spain all text was in spanish. lucky he spoke spanish huh.

    now where the hell is it for the rest of us.


  6. Wasn’t there some announcement late last year that all PSN titles would now be subject to a single submission and approval process for all stores? What happened there then? It either didn’t happen or it didn’t work.
    Or did I dream it?


    • Is this because we can be exposed to things the Americans and Japanese can’t? Or vice versa?


    • Yeah there was, but it’s not in practice yet.


  7. It’s because the games need to be localized. They want to make sure that Germans, Italians, French and British folks get the game at the same time. If they sell it only on the UK store you would get customer bleed over from other countries and it would be difficult to track marketplace sales.


    • I say filesystemcheck localization. If that is the reason for the delay then release an english only version on all the stores simultaneously. Clearly marked obviously, so you know what you are getting. Then release any localization as a patch later on.

      Don’t understand english and/or don’t like patches? Wait until the fully localized version is released. Otherwise you can get it at the same time as the USians.


  8. well, in all fairness, ive played all those games mentioned above* (yes including SFII turbo HD) and i thought them to be a bit crap, but it would be nice for everyone, to pay and realise this for themselves ;)

    *via my brothers yank C/C


  9. I want Lumnies!


    • Well that’s two PSN games I haven’t heard of, Lumies in djh’s article and now Lumnies in your comment. You’d think the people behind Lumines would be getting concerned at all these similarly spelt games. :)


  10. Is there any need for them to rush now?


  11. I had a comment answered on the official Playstation.Blog by Capcom, who said SCEE are a different beast altogether.

    Personally I’m thinking they are a bunch of tw@ts who need to pull the fingers out their arses and give their paying customers the service they deserve, or step aside and let someone more deserving do it.


  12. Even if it’s a difficult process, anything can be sped up if people work harder at it. There’s not many games for PSN expected soon (in comparison with disc versions), so it shouldn’t be a problem for them to just get more people working faster at it. It’s more about effort.


    • Exactly.
      It was originally said that it takes a week for SCEA approval and a fortnight for SCEE, anything longer than that is just being inept at the task in hand, and if Sony worldwide gave a shit then heads would be rolling, but they obviously don’t either.


  13. The only thing that would encourage SCEA to address the lag is if it’s hitting their profit margins. But you would have thought that some titles would be murdered by late delivery – as many have pointed out, SFII would largely be bought as a holdover until SFIV, and therefore becomes a less attractive purchase as SFIV’s release date gets closer and closer. Capcom must be frickinfrackin furious at the hit their projected downloads have taken due to the delay.

    So I wonder- would Sony give a rat’s arse if one of their most faithful publishers is being damaged? I also wonder how big a cut of every £10 DLC game goes to Sony as opposed to the publisher, because surely Sony are losing some money on this kind of thing at least? And if it’s actually hitting them in the margins, then when the hell is it going to be addressed?

    Grump grump grump grump….


  14. I already have the penny arcade games, there pretty good but i’ve rarely the time to play em.