Went to a party, and I got back much later than I thought I would. So let's skip all the fancy stuff, and get right to it.

Speaking of the PAL markets, (The European and Australian markets) there is another... rather interesting point that just came up. As you well know, there's always been one solution (although expensive that may be); importing.

Well... change that to a possible 'was'.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/23814.html

And as some supplementry material you might also want to read this:

http://uk.eurorights.org/

These particular articles might prove interesting. The state now is appalling, yes, but things may look far worse. A lot worse. Here's to hoping that Sony won't chase that avenue and use the UK and EU laws to outlaw the use of importing. I might not be directly affected, but well, once the EU and US go the one path, Australia is bound to follow.

No one quite believed me that eventually someone out there would be willing to throw enough money at a legal system to hit the legal crack that's been sitting there for years, but it's in both the American and British legal system. Although from a legal standpoint, America's system does have a few failsafes concerning this, I don't know how well it can take lots and lots of money thrown at them (Through lawyers naturally). I don't particularly LIKE the arguments being presented to prevent importing, (basically being the fact that you're breaking the copyright patent and circumventing copyright protection by using a licenced product in an unlicenced territory (in most cases from the US to the EU)) but they're there, regardless of the fact that it's... well, sheer idioticy. I don't like the idea, but it's there.

One of the major reasons for witholding releases from the European and Australian markets I've been told from developers at E3 (We had nice conversations incidentally) is the simple fact that releasing to the market can be a real pain in the backside, for relatively smaller gains. Here, we're only got about 20 million people total, so that's why Australia's on the backwater of gaming since the running market of people to run and buy games is relatively small, and hence can be told to wait.Well, until they can prove that every person in Australia owns their own PS2 and will each spend $100+ AU for a copy of FFX. ;)

In Europe, the fact that to get numbers, you need lots and lots of translation teams to get a market the size of America. (At least three, from what some told me French, German and I think Italian) As well... just say getting past the French Government can prove difficult. They may be the creme la creme of the civilised world (or so they say, but what what do I know?), but they sure have some weird laws concerning the amount of non-French content allowed and how it's distributed. Just say in the case of FFX, they want every word translated and dubbed, I'd be surprised if they settle for English voicing with French subtitles for instance. Germany also has some... rather difficult laws, but that tends to focus on World War 2 type games and is a story for another day.

Then of course there's little things like the above article which can make things an absolute mine field for anyone outside the US to release a game in Europe, either through direct importing, or by going through the long audious process of retranslating and localising a game. In either case, that means delays, or games not showing up at all... well, not legally anyway.

Then again, this is a legal technical standpoint of the poor state of European gaming (and a rather shady but currently valid one at that), and not many people in America I will suspect care, since well... how possibly could it affect them?

I guess that shows that we're as paitent like no other place on Earth to wait for our games. Or we're just so badly repressed.

Sorry for the technical tangent on addressing yesterday's letter.

Just a thought.

Mistress Nightshadow.

PS: Australia's paradise? Well... to visit yes. Not to live here though. When you have raging bushfires the size of three story houses some 20 miles away making a black ash fog which can get you to hospital, I'm not too sure. And think of all the displaced or killed animals when 80% of one of the world's biggest national parks went up in smoke. And for the last time Chesh, you know as well as I do that Paul Hogan is an American.

Hello,

I'll ask questions now...

1) In FF6 where does Banon go after the whole apocalypse fiasco?

2) In CT if you killed Magus the first time and played your game over in the Plus thing, can you choose not to kill him the second time?

3) Are the characters in FFX memorable?

4) What's your favorite Orson Scott Card book? Favorite book in general?

5) How many RPG's are in the works for the GameCube?

6) Is Rhapsody fun? Is Hoshigami?

Thank you kindly,

Star Flare

• Saiyuki
• DW7
• GTA3

• FFX
• Other stuff...
• Hoshigami again