Yes those of us in the UK speak english natively, but the rest of europe really doesn't (though that doesn't stop half of them speaking better english than most of us).
The split between the US/Japan and Europe historically has less to do with language than display frequency. With the Region 1 (US/Japan) areas adopting a 60HZ refresh rate, and the Region 2 areas (Europe) adopting a 50HZ refresh rate. For that reason both the consoles and the games need to be different. So it is not just the cost of translating games into different languages, there is a significant cost implication for redesigning the console to work at 50HZ (rather than 60) purely for us europeans and our crappy TV's.
One would have hoped that now HDTV's are available this problem would disappear, however some b@stards out there still haven't bought themselves new TV's, so the split endures.
Maybe by the time the next console generation comes around everyone will have HDTVs (or whatever standard comes after) and a single console will work everywhere in the world (providing a power adapter is provided). At that time only those who don't speak english (or chinese/indian) will have to wait for their games to get translated at extra cost!... Maybe pigs will fly too!
Even then I'm sure europe will still get screwed because were now used to getting screwed... and so we do!!!
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Re: Re: Oh Look. A USA Price Comparrison ...
Yes those of us in the UK speak english natively, but the rest of europe really doesn't (though that doesn't stop half of them speaking better english than most of us).
The split between the US/Japan and Europe historically has less to do with language than display frequency. With the Region 1 (US/Japan) areas adopting a 60HZ refresh rate, and the Region 2 areas (Europe) adopting a 50HZ refresh rate. For that reason both the consoles and the games need to be different. So it is not just the cost of translating games into different languages, there is a significant cost implication for redesigning the console to work at 50HZ (rather than 60) purely for us europeans and our crappy TV's.
One would have hoped that now HDTV's are available this problem would disappear, however some b@stards out there still haven't bought themselves new TV's, so the split endures.
Maybe by the time the next console generation comes around everyone will have HDTVs (or whatever standard comes after) and a single console will work everywhere in the world (providing a power adapter is provided). At that time only those who don't speak english (or chinese/indian) will have to wait for their games to get translated at extra cost!... Maybe pigs will fly too!
Even then I'm sure europe will still get screwed because were now used to getting screwed... and so we do!!!