Please don't flame me for this but, I really do think this article from sarcastic gamer speaks the truth, I understand and accept delays can happen and our price differences due to tax, but like the article says, 7 months to localize the language on the menus in blast factor is ridiculous, and having to put up with semi-official blogs is inferior to the us playstation.blog, sony europe just use it as a barrier between them and their rightfully angry customers.
I am a playstationer all round and will never swap to an xbox bcause the hardware is a dogs dinner, so again, please don't flame me, it's my opinion that this article is right, you can have your's, but just be respectful when stating it. 
Sarcastic Gamer says:
by Yamster
Yesterday, Sony held their E3 conference and it was a pretty interesting affair. It was boring at the start, pretty boring at the end. (save for the MAG announcement, which looks to be a pre-rendered Killzone 2-style affair all over again.) In the middle there was intruguing announcements coming one after the other. Resistance on PSP, emphasis on the PlayStation Network and the surprise announcement of the movie store being launched imminently.
For a PS3 owner Stateside, all of the news at E3 was pretty exciting, right? What about elsewhere in the world?
I wrote a blog in my pre-writer days on Sarcastic Gamer about the obvious differences in Sony’s regional content, taking it on as an open letter to the company from the entire continent of Europe. In the blog I pondered why localisation was such a large reason for delay (if you believe David Reeves, head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) when Metal Gear Solid 4 was released worldwide simultaneously and even brought South America into the equation, which has only just had word that it’ll be receiving its own localised PlayStation Store in the near future.
As David Reeves explained, it would be wrong for Sony to appear “Anglo-centric” if the UK was to receive content at the same time as the US. Sure, we’d get content in our first language at a fair time, but it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the continent. The thing is, Dave doesn’t realise that giving the US and Japan content first (Japan receiving almost daily updates to the store and the US getting a plethora of content every Thursday) and making Europe wait much longer is a little bit on the unfair side; almost anti-Europe in making us wait.
If you’re thinking I’m over-reacting, hear me out; Super Puzzle Fighter II HD Turbo Mega Hyper Go! Team EX (or whatever it’s called, something along those lines) took a year to arrive in Europe after its Stateside release. Blast Factor’s Advanced Research expansion pack might be terrible, but you have to wonder why it took around 7 months to change the language of the menu options. Maybe the developer just didn’t want to bother, and maybe Sony wasn’t really that bothered either.
What truly irritates me is that localisation appears to be the afterthought rather than a natural part of the development process, as it should be. In the same way that Hollywood films will hit America a month or two before the rest of the world, leaving the rest of us to wait for the dubbing team to work their magic, most games are released in America and Japan long before Europe, or even anywhere else, can dream of even getting their hands on them. Europe’s just overtaken America to become the second biggest gaming market after Asia; why isn’t this being recognised and Europe’s gamers receiving a little more respect that they are long overdue?
What’s really taken the biscuit though, was Sony’s storm of announcements at E3.
As I mentioned at the start of the article, Sony have made a bunch of announcements at E3 to get their American fanbase whooping and cheering. Biggest of all was that announcement of the movie store being available by the end of the day. I can’t tell you what it’s like though, as even with my American dummy account I can’t get a glance at the Movie section of the PlayStation Store so it’s obvious Sony have region locked it to prevent people with US-enabled credit cards from downloading content.
Why can’t Sony just give the UK this content, since we speak the same language, or just hold back everybody’s content for a worldwide release making everything just that little bit fairer? Perhaps Sony could consider organising quicker localisation with its developers (on the PlayStation Network at the very least) so that the rest of the world isn’t sitting for up to a year waiting for a release they really should have had much earlier.
Some of you are probably sitting there shaking your heads, thinking “Yamster man, you’re cool and all (okay, I made that bit up) but you’re overreacting! Sony aren’t being that restrictive when it comes to European content on the Store.” In fact, even when it comes to content in the same language Sony are quick to deny the UK more than half of what the US can expect.
Let’s take, as an appropriate example, the PlayStation Store’s E3 coverage. Below is a photo I took last night, about an hour or two after Sony’s conference ended, of the “E3 Content” page of the UK PlayStation Store. The page description promises “the latest from Los Angeles”.
That’s five trailers. Okay, you might think, maybe it’s just because this photo was taken not so after Sony had presented everything at their conference. It’s obvious that Sony hadn’t gotten round to uploading the trailers just yet, so there was only five up at the time, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
This photo was taken about a minute after I took the UK one. You can see where I’m coming from. Some of these trailers were already uploaded before the conference took place, and Sony even went to the trouble of gracing the American Store with a fancy E3 background.
Okay, given it’s only a small detail but it’s when all of these small details amass into a great big list of kicks to the collective groin of Europe’s PS3 owners that I start to get ***** off, along with those who decide to channel their anger into “WHERE IZ HOME I WANT IT NAO” on every blog post that appears on the PlayStation.Blog and on UK sister site ThreeSpeech.
Man, you know what? Even ThreeSpeech ticks me off!
ThreeSpeech, for those of you uninformed, is the “semi-official” sister site to the US PlayStation.Blog and is presumed to be SCEE’s answer to the service SCEA provides. On the PlayStation.Blog (still hate that full stop) game producers provide all kinds of interesting tidbits about their next project and Sony developers list what we can expect from the next firmware updates even provide us with video walkthroughs, all direct from inside the company itself.
However, in Europe we can expect nothing of the sort. We can’t expect David Reeves writing about Sony’s future plans in Europe, nor can we have the England-based Evolution Studios (developers of MotorStorm and its sequel) delivering up-to-the-minute info on what we can expect from their next game. (The irony is, Evolution have been on the PlayStation.Blog to tell us all about MotorStorm DLC, among other things.) Nope, when it came to Europe’s answer to the official Sony blog, the PR hacks over at SCEE decided to hire a marketing company called Ramp Industry, previously experienced in working with TV station Channel 4, cellphone network Orange and Balance Board-complementing furniture company Ikea.
With the work of reporting on European PlayStation goings-on was diverted to an independent company, anonymous writers contribute to ThreeSpeech with the occasional piece of genuinely useful information (admirably, their E3 coverage has been good until you realise it’s got as much going on as the UK PlayStation Store) and Sony avoid having to make a connection with their European customers. Quite why they figured this would be an ideal marketing strategy, I don’t know.
Frankly, the use of an ‘independent’ blog (as once claimed by ThreeSpeech, but this has changed to ’semi-official’) means that the PR hacks working away on the site can promise that visitors will be able to submit questions to Sony and they’ll all be answered; they promote themselves as the bridge between fan and company, the middleman in making a connection with a fanbase. Of course, even after being promised answers to my various questions posed to Sony by one of ThreeSpeech’s writers (on the subject of Europe, actually) I’ve received nothing back. And it’s been four months.
Why are Sony so afraid of making a direct connection with their European fanbase? In America, they’re all too happy to provide their customers with up-to-the-minute insider information on whatever’s coming next in the PlayStation family, but then again they’ll be doing so because they know they wont come under fire in the same way they would if they were to make direct contact with the European customers they’ve treated with much less respect. A European PlayStation.Blog would be a momentous failure unless Sony cleaned up their act in European downloadable content and generally treated us lot the way we deserve to be treated.
Suppose it’s time for a wrap-up. Still, there’s time to rip into Sony again and you can relish all of that next.
As a European PlayStation 3 owner since day one, I’m no stranger to how we’re treated in comparison to our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic or even in comparison to our friends on the other side of the world. We were charged not $599 but around $850 for the privelege of owning a PlayStation 3, we were made to wait for half a year after America, and we’re still overcharged when it comes to boxed games, peripherals and downloads from the PlayStation Network. While some boxed game delays are inevitable and this happens over several formats, we’re still made to wait up to a year for our downloadable games because the developer can’t be bothered localising it and because Sony can’t be bothered asking them to do so.
We’re charged more for less content (as an example, MotorStorm’s downloadable content would cost £3.50 apiece for extra paint jobs and a extra vehicles; in America the two were combined for around $4) and we receive less content on our PlayStation Store, with the States even receiving a complete gaming show and exclusives in the form of Qore and us having no word on a PS3-ready movie download service while America gets it out of the blue.
Not only that, but our own company doesn’t even want to talk to us, and blocks us out by hiring a bunch of PR hacks to do the dirty work. They essentially stuff their fingers in their ears and shout that they can’t hear us, while a “semi-offical” blog takes all the fire that’s really reserved for them.
Sony in Europe know they’re delivering us a bad service, as far out of line with America and Japan’s quality of service as George W. Bush is at a MENSA meeting. What’s worst of all though, is that they wont even face us to acknowledge the fact that we’re receiving a bad deal and really deserve better, since we’re being made to pay more than any other territory and are receiving a lot less back in return. Come on Sony, this movie store really is the last straw. Give us Europeans some parity with the rest of the world or I swear to God, I’ll walk into my nearest game store and trade everything in for a 360.
And I wish I was kidding. 
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Hopefully not but this 'll probably end up being deleted because it's thought of as negativity, when really it's unhappy customers expressing their complaints and wanting something done about it !
