The Problem with Publishing in Europe

[Che Musashi]

I have a client who is a consultant for game companies like EA and whatnot. Anyway I decided to pick his brain about why companies don't put out games in Europe.

What it boils down to is that there are too many middlemen who you have to pay just to get your game on the shelf. By not being unified like Japan or the US, makes publishing and distributing games more difficult.

For game companies its too expensive to go through all that rigomoral to deal with some guy who takes six weeks vacation when its all said and done. That's what I heard from him.

I wish that there would be a way where either importing is easier or more companies embrace the PAL market.

[yashiro]

Importing is easy. Thanks to the internet of course.

The aim of this very site is to remove the mysticism that some people seem to think surrounds importing video games.

I know europe is a distribution nightmare compared to jpn/us but that will never change imo. The best thing for gamers would be the dropping of region encoding so we can buy games in whatever format/language we like.

[neogeoman]

The middlemen comment is very interesting. That's often the complaint in Japan too, there's a dozen people between the manufacturer and the retailer all wanting a cut. It's only recently that the big retailers have started springing up and bringing their own distribution system in so they can deal direct with the manufacturer.

[Len]

For game companies its too expensive to go through all that rigomoral to deal with some guy who takes six weeks vacation when its all said and done. That's what I heard from him.

That'll be the French and Italians then...

[yashiro]

That'll be the French and Italians then...

Don't forget the Spaniards.

[Len]

That'll be the French and Italians then...

Don't forget the Spaniards.

Exactly...

[tankplanker]

And the Germans. Bank holidays on a Thursday for gods sake, why have one day off when you can have two?

[Che Musashi]

I wasn't aware of middlemen in Japan but maybe for the sake of simplifying everything lets just say there are more in Europe. And yeah I think he as was talking about the french.

[Roost]

Its always the french, you see em on the athletics constantly stopping them from running bloody frenchies :P

[chevkoch]

EA Europe itself thinks different apparently (at least concerning the big titles):

22 August 2003
By Stuart Dinsey
ELECTRONIC ARTS' Gerhard Florin has revealed that he wants seven out of the 10 best-selling games this Christmas and believes Europe could overtake the US as its biggest territory in five years.

Talking exclusively to MCV, the senior VP and MD of European publishing also stated that he expected the firm's market share dominance to continue - and even increase - this year."My personal goal is to have seven out of the Top 10 titles across Europe. I think we could do that with FIFA 2004, Harry Potter Quidditch, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, Medal Of Honor, The Sims for console and SoulCalibur II," he said."I don't know which of these will be the best seller.

Then again, there is going to be a lot of competition this year, so seven out of 10 won't be easy."EA will be increasing its Q4 marketing spend to help propel the releases in what it considers to be a largely buoyant market."I believe that within EA, Europe could generate more revenue than North America by 2008. We sell a lot of games in Europe because we take the time to localise them for each language and culture.?The full interview with Gerhard Florin will appear in next week's special ECTS issue of MCV.

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