As some of you guys may know, the cost of games is really overpirced in Australia. A few weeks (or maybe a month) ago, I returned my Oz copy of COD4, got my money back, and then ordered an American version from PlayAsia - I saved a lot of money.

When I got into the game, my old save didn't work and I had to start a new game.  This wasn't really a big problem, because my single player campaign wasn't very far anyway.

However, I've also got a copy of the American GTA 4 on pre-order, but I was thinking of picking up a local version on launch day so I can play it, then return it when my order arrives here (estimated to be May 12).  But if the same thing happens again, then I'll have to start GTA 4 all over again as well.

My question to PS3 owners is, do you know if save games from local versions of games never work with imported games, or if this was just a one time thing with COD4?

i havent got any probs

Good question. I just found out from a friend who had to return his PS3 that the Rock Band save is unique to a system, which sucks because I like downloading saves from gamefaqs to save me time with rentals (unlocking secrets and such). I hope it's just games that have online leaderboards that will protect saves like that.

Maybe CoD4 was particular because of this reason, although I don't know why the disc region would matter. That's strange.

My American copy arrived yesterday, and yeah, my save game from the Aussie version doesn't work with it. Does anyone know a way to get them to work, or is it impossible?

It could be because the regon is different. That matters for saves sometimes, I think. Might want to google a save game converter for PS3 and see what you find. I know for PS2 I had to change save game types for gameshark to import them to my PS2. I would download a codemasters save from gamefaqs and then convert it to gameshark, as an example.

If it's not the region then I guess it's related to online stats like Rock Band (and I guess CoD4).

games still have different regions !

PS3 is more a "ALL REGION" system then region free -- having multiple regions allows devlopers like R* to edit one version of a game easily ...

Unfortunatly it can consufe the save system... though i also suspect it could also be aimed at preventing cheating ...