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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.ImportGaming 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.ImportGaming, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
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The vast majority of [[Video Games]] are made in America and Japan. These two countries use NTSC TVs, and so games are naturally optimised to work with this technology. Europe, however, uses PAL TVs, which the games are not optimized for. Therefore, many games are poorly converted from NTSC's 480-line,
A further delay results from the need to translate games into, at the very least, French, German, Spanish, and Italian for the European release. This delay varies depending on the amount of text and story in the game, with the result that story-heavy games take longer to be released, thus adding even more time between the NTSC debut and the PAL
In addition, the PAL versions of some games may be censored or edited to comply with local laws. Germany, for example, has strict laws about violence in video games. Some games, such as ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Path of Radiance'', have features inexplicably cut from the international release, and importing is the only way to get them. And then, of course, some people simply can't wait a few months to get their hands on a shiny new game that is going to have a PAL release anyway.
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In some cases, importing a game can actually be cheaper than just buying the PAL version. This is due to the practise of taking the US price and replacing the dollar sign with a pound sign, and then converting this into the local currency despite the fact that the pound is worth almost twice as much as the US dollar. When you add tax, this can result in some outrageously priced games (case in point: ''[[Rock Band]]''). Interestingly, this trend seems to have been slightly reversed since 1999, when the price was calculated by converting the US price into euro instead.
Things have improved markedly since the end of the [[
So, generally speaking, Europeans and especially Australians still get the short end of the stick. Naturally, as far as the companies are concerned, importing must be stopped, no matter the cost, as long as it doesn't involve, you know, releasing a wider library on a more timely schedule with better localisations. In other words, actual ''work''.
Fortunately, things are looking much better on the handheld front, as those are generally region-free. However they suffer from similar release date problems. A case in point is that, despite having been released in the US, ''[[Phantom Brave]]: [[Updated Rerelease|We Meet Again]]'' still has no UK release date.
Another reason for importing is to get one's hands on [[Widget Series|weird stuff]] that will never see a release outside of Japan. This phenomenon <s>even</s> especially happens in America. In this case, as well as the technological hurdles, there is the problem of trying to understand the Japanese manual and game text.
Sometimes the popularity of a game on the import market can lead to its localization. The Japanese videogame ''[[
Importing is at a bit of a crossroads, these
See also [[No Export for You]] and [[Regional Bonus]].
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[[Category:Videogame Culture]]
[[Category:Import Gaming]]
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