On another forum a topic was made about whether Mario Strikers Charged was anough to make up for Europe not getting Super Paper Mario and Pokemon yet, with no date in sight. But, it was basiclly to complain -_-

But, one topic brought up was that game releases should be universal. Every country getting the game on the same day.

 What I'm wondering is first, is it practical. I've heard that worldwide game(and console) launches are pricey. Also, should Japan and the US be punished and forced to wait becuase Nintendo of Europe(or whoever, but since this was a Nintendo forum, it's NoE) is lazy and translating five languages is hard? I'd like to get a lot of opinions here.

I'm sure that any developer could fit translation into the actual development cycle if they want to. Any stories about having to delay a game for translation is just bullshit. Besides, Japanese games need to be translated into English just as well when they're being developed in Japanese. So saying the US would be punished for having to translate games into other languages is a non argument as well. Basically, game developers don't give a shit about Europe and it's about time we start to do something about it. Best thing would be to completely boycott all of them until they finally treat us as important customers.

I do agree that Game Developers dont care about Europe. I can sympatise. But, it may be hard to add translations to the development cycle. RPGs mostly. They have SOOOOO much text that translating would be out of the question in order to release it during key periods of the year. It can also hinder game developemtn and get in the way. I am more for the locilization of games to Europe to stop sucking. I do think that the UK should get the US copies(it's already in English).

Well, here in Holland we also get the english version (thank god for that, translating it in Dutch will 99 out of 100 times completely ruin the experience).

About the text within a game, I think the story is known quite early in the design process and even the actual text will most likely be written down at the early stages. Maybe during development they could make some adjustments, but that means they could start translation of the first draft already, where they only need to make corrections for changes made during the course of the development.

Anyway, if I would walk into Iwata I would kick his ass and take his name for screwing us over here in Europe

The main problem is localization. The US and Japan only really need one language, but in Europe you have english but also French, german, italian, spanish ect... and anyone who has played Super Paper Mario will know how wordy it is and it takes a long time to translate it into all those languages.

ZZetaAlec, it doesn't matter that there are many languages involved. When Super Paper Mario can be released in the US before being released in Japan, I'm sure they could have translated the game into all those other languages at the same time they translated the US version and released the game in Europe in April as well. But at the moment that freaking game doesn't even have a release date yet! I'm seriously considering not to buy it once it comes out btw.

It's still ridiculous. It's not as if there's one person translating it into all the languages, you have a different team working on each language. What that means is (shock, horror) those teams can work in parallel and it would take the same amount of time to translate into one language (English) as it would to translate into five! Worldwide release of a game is easy, Europe have their own disc pressing plants and all that needs to be sent to Europe is the data. There is no reason why a game shouldn't be released simultaneously except to exploit the timing of a particular market. I can understand why worldwide console releases are difficult (just ask Nintendo) but there's no reason why a game can't be released worldwide simultaneously.

What if they want each version to have live voice acting not just subtitles. How many different languages in Europe, i'am not waiting 4/5 months longer just so they can make all the versions and release then all at once. My version is done i want it now.

I assum timing is the reason. But, as someone said, there are five languages. For an RPG or game with voice acting, doing it all at the same time wouldn't be effective. They would miss launch windows. Games like, Warioware would be a good example.

There is no reason to delay games if it would be possible to release it earlier, and that makes me thinking that it's just not possible to release games in all the three territories at the same time. And it is quite obviously that this is due to the translation, we have to wait much longer for an rpg than for a platformer. you also have to consider that nintendo just has so many translators; they may have to translate other games first.