For those of you in Europe and Australia expecting to get your hands on the newest installment of Smash Bros along with the Americas on Feb 10, this news may come as a great dissapointment. Below is the article i found on the web:

Nintendo's eagerly anticipated fighting game Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been delayed again, only this time the delay applies only to Europe and Australia. When Brawl was given its February release date in America, many people, including myself, believed that this guaranteed a similar launch date for PAL regions. All the obvious reasons were there. Usually the main playing factor for European delays is the language barrier. It would be deemed unfair to launch English language copies of a game in Great Britain and Ireland just because they speak the tongue of their native brothers across the pond in the States. And with games containing as much context as they do these days this can often take many months with many different translation teams. Unfortunately for our Australian readers they fall into the same basket just because of a region-lock difference.

The game has officially been set to release some time after Q2 2008 in the PAL region, that being the second quarter of 2008. Revealed by a Nintendo spokesperson to VideoGamer.com, the news came as a nuclear bomb to the already disheartened consumers, following setbacks of other massively anticipated games such as Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Battalion Wars II. Now here's the confusing list of questions. Why? Surely they had enough time to translate everything during the initial delay? What can possibly be the reasoning behind this delay? How much text could possibly be in a game like Brawl? What other factors besides screen modes could be different from the North American version of the game?

"If the game is not listed on the schedule up until the end of Q2 it is currently not due out until after that time"
Nintendo spokesperson speaking to VideoGames.com

I myself am European. I am not suffering. I am not screaming with frustration as many of my American friends believe. I am just confused, and slightly taken aback by the complete ignorance of a large company such as Nintendo. Bungie's Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 is my guinea pig for this subject. Halo 3 was launched in North America on November 25, 2007. It was launched in Europe on November 26, one day later. Now I'm no expert, nor do I have any insight to the games trade, but I'm fairly certain that Halo 3 has a lot more text in it than Brawl. So what else could be behind these delays? And why do Europeans and Australians constantly get pushed to the back of the line? And why is it only Nintendo? So many questions, and yet so few answers.

Source: http://www.wiiloaded.com/wii-news-Brawl-to-hit-Europe-after-Q2-Why-a-13179

I'm among those unlucky Australians so this just plain sucks. Any thoughts?

If it is true, it will be a shame... That's the kind of things that are barely impossible to explain... They want to wait till the install base grow? They have been pressed by third parties because they know this will be a monster? or are they so confident that they can sell every Wii they put on the shelves without his help?

I wonder if this is their plan of wise allocating of their Wiis, so that they won't have a major sellout worldwide in the middle of March?

@ Wojtas - Probably something like that. It's happened with a lot of the major titles. Offsetting launches could be a way of countering the demand/supply issues like you said.

This is old? They just released a list with games with firm dates and because it didnt have brawl on it, everybody was like OMG the world is gonna end. But there are lot games coming that arent on that list.
There will be a delay but it will be about the same as smg and metroid 3, no big deal.

@misteromar: same as SMG? 4 days. This is 4 months.

@Topic: Well, this is old news. But i do really hope they change the day to Q1.
For the first time i'm really pissed about the delay. Not pissed about the delay itself, but i'm pissed since it has online and it's really fun go playing online, when you're the noob and people you fight have been beating the game for at least 3 months. And it's even worse knowing how SSB is played, you don't play them every now and then, you play them 24/7.
Btw. since Mario Kart also has it's release at the same time with Brawl, it could be online issues. Wasn't it Gamespy, that handles Wiis online? In that case, i blame Gamespy. I have to go to their HQ and fart like Wario. I shall have my revenge.

Thats what Im saying, it aint gonna be delayed that much, I say, 4 weeks at the most from ntsc to pal.

Is anyone shocked the Europe gets games many games and most systems last? It is much harder and more expensive to program games for Europe for obvious reasons. The largest market for most games in North America by a large amount and it even sometimes gets games after Japan.

And Nintendo does sometimes give earlier releases and better prices to Other. Endless Ocean is out right now in Europe and Big Brain Academy is 50% less in Australia when compared to North America.

Remember of Sony released the PS3 late in Europe? At least you are not Korea, China, India, or South America where systems may be delayed for years, if they ever even come out :)

And on the bright side, the cool thing about Europe is that you can buy games from France or Spain and play them in Germany. This helps with the size of the used market, the ability to play games in various languages, and adds to the general availability of games as certain games sell best in certain markets.

In other words, stop your crying :)

Argh. that pisses me off.