My guess is that they don't allow the imports and such due to licensing. Licenses would have to be different in most countries, in order to comply with the laws of that country. As for release date, I am surprised it isn't the same for Europe, if it isn't. I would not be surprised if it released later in places with lower market share (parts of Asia, Africa, S. Amer, etc.) b/c the translation takes time and they don't want to have to wait for everything to be translated before releasing it in their main markets. That is definately NOT good PR.

Also, part of the reason for later release may be due to import restrictions. I know Australia has tighter restrictions on game sales and it wouldn't surprise me if much of Europe does, too. The U.S. tends to have less restrictions on selling things than most countries for most items. The 2 main exceptions to that rule are food and drugs, which the U.S. tries to guard fairly closely on what is let in.

The European copies are not imported from the U.S., they're produced locally at the MS production facility in Ireland (at least that's how it was for all previous Age games). It all comes down to freeing up enough production and transport capacity there and in other parts of the world. The people in charge just need to care enough to coordinate it all properly, that's all there's to it, really.

We are still releasing simultaneously everywhere in the Americas, Europe and part of Asia (Japan typically runs a few months behind). That means that the product is available for retailers to purchase and ship then. When they actually do it is largely up to them.

It's not like there is a big Microsoft helicopter than visits every retailer at the same hour and drops off copies of the software. What we saw on AOK and AOM is that different stores in the same city could get the game several days apart. It's also typical for the specialty retailers to get new games sooner than the big box stores.

Also keep in mind that all of those dates are just estimates. We are announcing the official date as October 18, but even that is just a target. On previous titles, the games showed up in stores sooner than that.

Thanks for letting us know.

ES owns

apparently MockHamill is right after all! No simultanious release!:@

yeah, stupid idiots, this will increase dl'ing of aoe3 in europe

Can no-one here read? Europe will get the game at the same time as the US.

that post from es is old, it wont be released at the same time, we will get it 15 days later

So it is.

Never mind, eh?

[This message has been edited by Andrew Dunn (edited 10-02-2005 @ 05:30 PM).]

I'll organize the commando mission to ES headquarters to "buy" the game.

Quote:

hmm....that sounds like a good idea, and i would finally get a chance to use my ninja suit....