fishamaphone said:
Again, you underestimate the difference that states have. Granted, the different cultures are less pronounced, but are you trying to tell me that what's popular, or even legal, in Kansas is going to be the same as in L.A.?
Not quite. Thank you I'm often enough in the USA. I am aware, that in the bible belt you can't sell the same things than in New York.
But you find these differences even in each European contry. In a way at the moment Bayern (as usual ) and Niedersachsen (these Idiots should not expect that someone will be stupid enough to vote for them again) are totally over the top and have lost even the slightest contact with the ground. But I have to admit that the difference between the countyside and the major cities is hardly as significant than in the USA.
But even if you consider this there still remains a significant difference between France and Germany for example.
fishamaphone said:
The point is, there are generalizations you can make about Europe that can't be applied to the US or Japan, and *that* is what separates a market.
For example: Aside from some price differences, you can buy a Smart car just as easily in Finland as you can in France, but you walk up to an American, and they don't even know what the thing is. Why? I don't know, but it implies that all the European countries share some characteristic that just doesn't occur in the US.
You don't really get it. Yes it is possible to make a multi language disc but I can tell you: if you don't localise them in the specific countries theay won't sell! You really underestimate the laguage barriers. You find many actors that are more or less famous in France, while very few people would know them in Germany and Vice Versa.
If you have a product in one European country you can export it and sell it in France without any changes, but you mustn't expect that it will sell the same. While you have differences between german cities you can sell there considerable more german cars (VW, Audi, Merceds, Opel) and less french cars (Renault, Citroen) than in France.
You must look quite closely to see if countries have common traits or not. And in the case of games and computers you have only a very limited number of common traits between single countries, much less in the EU or even in the Euro Zone. They exist totally independendly.
The common discs are a bit misleading. It is simply cheaper to produce . By the way, France didn't use PAL but SECAM but in the day and age of DVDs this difference was only a small difference in the output electronic of the player...