US Players Purchase Info

[Brausepaul]

I really have to disagree with the view some of the posters expressed in this thread. let me first give you some info about myself. I'm German and currently reside in the US (Delaware, The First State, yeah). I'm 27 and addicted to computer games since I played my first more about 20 years ago.

Browsing the KoH web page today I was pretty surprised that KoH is not officially release in the US (or in America at all). I tried to find a release date a couple of weeks ago since I was thinking of getting this game during my stay in the US. But after a while I realized that it is very logical that KoH is not released on this side of the pond.

Let me explain: basically the decision about where to release a game is made by the publisher. While the designer most probably want everyone to play their game, the publisher is the devil's advocate who uses all kind of idiot-proof marketing research (...) to determine if it is worth to release a game in X or not. EA made this decision, and they have (their) good reasons. Apparently they think that there are not enough customers to balance the costs. It doesn't matter if 10 people post here that they had to import the game from Europe...if wouldn't matter if 100 people would post it here...face the harsh reality: a game like KoH is not mainstream, and even if well advertized: it won't be mainstream ever. I remember a German article expressing the view of an US computer game developer claiming that German computer games (as an example of games made by smaller European companies) are too complicated for the US market...because you need a manual. He said that the usual gamer wants to fire up the game and start without having to learn the game.

While my personal opinion is that KoH is not complicated (note: that is an assumption since I can't get the game), it is definately too complicated for the market...maybe an EA official would have said: not compatible with the American market. While this might be basically right for the masses this is not a description of the people that might be interested in KoH IMHO.

Second note about release: it's note true that the European market gets the games first. I experienced several differences concerning the release dates in Europe and America: Il2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles was released in the US two weeks before it was available in Europe, for example. The release dates are more or less the same, one game being released earlier in Europe, one game earlier in the US/Canada.

[Sir Turylon]

Well.
He said that the usual gamer wants to fire up the game and start without having to learn the game.
Uh, maybe this person was in the console gaming industry? KoH does not require you to pick up a manual and read it before you understand it. Heck, the tutorial isn't even needed. It is a very simple game with a low learning curve... say... 10-15 minutes.

Second point. Since when is Electronic Arts a European company? EA started over here. They are also releasing 2-3 RTS games of their own, last I counted. All of these would be coming out within a few months. (IE competition for KoH, and vice-versa)

Lastly, KoH was reviewed by companies over here. Which doesn't make sense either... Why would IGN, Gamespot, Strategy Informer, et al, review a game that will never be released over here?

What I'm hoping for is KoH to sell out it's current production, so it forces them to make more. Maybe then it will be actually released over here for under $60

Note: Half Life 2 came out for $59.99. Doom 3 was $59.99. Battle for Middle Earth ~$59.99. Rome: Total War $39.99. Knights of Honor $55.00 - $65.00 a 2D game more expensive then the latest 3D games? *tells the band to start playing "World turned upside down" *

[Brausepaul]

EA is not a European company, but Sunflowers is. As far as I remember, this guy was not a console representative, I will try to dig out the article to have a name at hand.

EDIT: news was at http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/50139 (German text)

The guy is Bob Bates and he made that statement during GC-Developer-Conference in Leipzig in August this year. Unfortenately I have no idea who Bob Bates really is...anyone...?

[Sir Turylon]

I translated that site with babelfish and it was talking about console games.
(babelfish did a very poor job.. lol)

Basically he was saying that US players are too impatient to have to learn a game. They want to just sit down and play, not have to learn to play. This is such a farsical comment. Console games, such as nintendo and playstation, have always been about dumb entertainment. Turn tv on, pop in disk, and off you go to kill some weird over-grown lizard. Yay! The newer console platforms have really not improved in their depth still. The games are self-teaching. Rarely do you get a game that takes you more than 3-4 reloads to beat.

the GCDC is a European game producers convention... So, naturally, the guy is gonna talk about why Euro-games are not selling too well over here. (because the American gaming industry has been stupifying the gamers over years. I'll post if you want some proof, but just look at the rise of "low intelligence" games over the past 4 years liks CS)

FYI: Mr Bates does not speak for the American gamer. He only can speak for himself. :go:

did some background infosearching on mr Bates.
interview with him (http://www.adventurecollective.com/interviews/interview-bobbates.htm)
He works at Legend Entertainment.
The last game they released was..... Unreal 2. (hardly a game which requires brainthought)
In the interview, he rants on about how the adventure genre is dead.
He is currently unemployed in the gaming industry. His website (http://www.bobbates.com)

so yeah... sounds like the guy has a fiddle to play. :cheers:

[LittleJohn]

Another US person here wishing I could get the game loved the demo but cant afford to import it. As a matter of fact I seldom buy games till they go down in price to $20 US or so this is one that I would probably pay $40 for it realy looks like it has a lot of replayability which is one of the main things I look for. Its obviously much better from a strategy stand point than the Total War series. And I much prefer strategy over micromanageing battles. I think with a little promotion it could do very well over here. I relise it probably wont sell as many copies as the shooters that seem to be competeing over who can be the most digusting (much like the new reality shows which I cant stand either) but it could do very well.
One thing though I have noticed many european games are very buggy out of the box thats not generaly the norm here and can realy piss a lot of people off so I would wait till its very well pached before bringing it over here will annoy a lot of people but not as many as if it had a lot of bugs though. As a mater of fact that seems to be what some German developers are doing recently releaseing it in Germany for a couple months and patching it well before releaseing internationaly. Personaly I think its a good idea.

[Sparta]

I dont understand why you couldnt find a good publisher in the US.

Why not use steam? You'll make more from each sale and anyone worldwide can get it. Fast.

[Sir Turylon]

I dont understand why you couldnt find a good publisher in the US.

Why not use steam? You'll make more from each sale and anyone worldwide can get it. Fast.

steam is a registered trademark of Sierra Corporation... It is their sole propriety distribution system... and it completey ****s.

[Sparta]

No, its owned by Valve. There is no Sierra anymore, EA liquidated it.

And it does not ****. When did you use it? A year ago when it was in beta? It works perfectly fine now. Steam was made for distrobution, Valve WANTS people to release games over it.

[Sir Turylon]

Actually, I was on steam last night. I've had HL since it came out. :go:

And Valve wants other companies to use it's system to hand out games that will compete with their own games? That seems far fetched.

btw, if sierra does not exist... what is..

Sierra Entertainment (http://sierra.com/)

[Sparta]

Valve made steam as a distrobution agent that cuts the producers out. Thats why HL2 was late, Vivendi sued valve over it. They make money with each sale, much like a production company, but they dont take AS much because all they have to do is provide bandwidth.

Do you honestly think KoH would compete with HL2? I doubt it.

As for Sierra's site, they're not goign to take it down because they closed doors. They're owned by Vivendi, so Vivendi will use the name to sell games of theirs. Notice how, although Sierra had absolutley no hand in HL2, thats the game thats plastered all over sierra.com?

[thorpemark]

Ordered Nov 15th.. got it Monday the 22nd in New Jersey

After playing a full game on Normal difficulty as Munster in Early period I moved up to Hard as The Teutonic Knights in the High period .. and now I have been getting crashes to desktop, CTDs.

It does seem a bit harder... but I can't put my finger on why it is a bit harder.

Oh.. I don't really do the RTS part.. I simulate all battles because, compared to Rome:TW.. this RTS doesn't cut it.

And about "low intelligence" games... you cannot look at an action shooter and assume anyhting about the person playing it. There are plenty of PHDs who work out in gyms, play basketball or run or bike.. none of those activities require a lot of brain power.

I have both action shooter (like Americas Army) and egrossing strategy games.. like the Paradox games.. and now Knights of Honor and Rome:TW.. loaded up.

The truth is, I think we are all looking for the perfect game... a combination of Rome:TW, Knights of Honor and all the Paradox games.

KoH doesn't have the depth of the Paradox Games (like Crusader Kings) or the RTS grandeur of the R:TW game. The Paradox Games don't have the eye candy of either KoH or R:TW. R:TW doesn't have the strategic depth or smarts of either of these other games.

If they can build programs to play chess well, they should be able to make the AI of these games make logical, and sometimes surprising moves. It is a cop-out to suggest that people should have to play online vs other humans.

[kmadj]

EA is not a European company, but Sunflowers is. As far as I remember, this guy was not a console representative, I will try to dig out the article to have a name at hand.

EDIT: news was at http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/50139 (German text)

The guy is Bob Bates and he made that statement during GC-Developer-Conference in Leipzig in August this year. Unfortenately I have no idea who Bob Bates really is...anyone...?

EU game publishers do not have the $ to manufacture, advertise & distribute their games in North America effectively with out help from multinational publishers which are mainly Americans, unfortunately these companies i.e., EA will give priority to their own (North America) game developers/games in the same generation.
So EU companies such as Sunflower or Jowood have to make a decision to either wait a year or so for a strong representation in NA market or go with a third rated companies such as Encore that spend very litter on advertising thus market failure is almost guaranteed.

[Sparta]

I'm standing by my idea of using steam. It offers both advertiising (You'd be the ONLY OTHER GAME on a list that EVERY HALF LIFE player sees) and production (or an escape from it). That way the publisher can spend much more on advertising.

[kmadj]

I translated that site with babelfish and it was talking about console games.
(babelfish did a very poor job.. lol)

Basically he was saying that US players are too impatient to have to learn a game. They want to just sit down and play, not have to learn to play. This is such a farsical comment. Console games, such as nintendo and playstation, have always been about dumb entertainment. Turn tv on, pop in disk, and off you go to kill some weird over-grown lizard. Yay! The newer console platforms have really not improved in their depth still. ...................
FYI: Mr Bates does not speak for the American gamer. He only can speak for himself. :go:

...................................
In the interview, he rants on about how the adventure genre is dead.
He is currently unemployed in the gaming industry. His website (http://www.bobbates.com)

so yeah... sounds like the guy has a fiddle to play. :cheers:


Actually, the guy had a valid point, right or wrong it doesn't matter! That has been the trend for sometimes now in NA! As we have been seeing more shooters and less strategy games on the shelves... hey even KOEI has long gave up on the PC market in NA, precisely for that reason!
i.e., I don't have to look far, I used to buy over 20 to 30 strategy games each year, back in the 90's and now I would be lucky to find just a hand full, with half of them imports!
The problem is that a good Strategy game is very difficult to develop and expensive to make as it actually requires a brain (AI) behind the game engine where a shooter / RTS does not but a pretty graphic. Now guess which generation, these short sighted suits who are running the show will push down your throat? After all not many of these guys are SID MEIER's clones who actually love the hobby!
Sorry to say that but it seems, those golden days have long gone!

[schering]

Actually, the guy had a valid point, right or wrong it doesn't matter! That has been the trend for sometimes now in NA! As we have been seeing more shooters and less strategy games on the shelves...

There's plenty of excellent strategy games out there on the American market, some of which have received an exceptional amount of marketing effort. Just think of the latest ones, Rome:Total War and LOTR:Battle for Middle Earth, which seem to be of the same complexity level as KOH.

The problem is that Euro companies lack the means and ambition to challenge the big established players.

I don't blame EA for not distributing the product in North America, after all they have just invested heavily in one of KOH's main competitor: Battle for Middle-Earth!

[Sir Turylon]

oh no, I totally agree with the fact that gaming companies are mass-producing simplistic games which a 6 year old can learn in under 20 minutes. This is partly why I have not bought a single game in the past almost... 2 years. None of the new games has ever been challenging. The last one I've acquired would be DS, mainly because it looked nice... and I like the whole concept of running around and smacking things with big swords. :go: The problem with the rts market is now companies are trying to port the genre over into the rpg one. Best example is WC3. Blizzard is one of the few companies that could make such a thing work.

The only problem with what that guy was ranting about is that he is labeling all of the gamers in the US as dumb idiots who get their kicks from looking at anatomically correct females bouncing around like jello while they shoot stupid AI zombies that get stuck on corners... Oh yay! look, I can shoot a zombie and watch scantly clad chicks bounce around! so much fun..... if I was 12... ever notice how every RPG uses a scantly clad female to lure gamers into buying the game?

But enough ranting about the degeneration of gaming smartness. Has anyone been able to get KoH for under $50 US yet?

[Da_weasel]

I can't really complain about it not being in the usa right now.I mean I remeber a game that took almost 1 year to get to here that was made in europe..Anyone rember a game called Wing Commander?My dad brought ti over here when it was being relased there but after a awhile it got caught on here so all I have to say is things take time and it will come in due time.Thanks for listening to me.

[Picotrain]

game.net currently has the KoH game on sale for 19.99 pounds, which is 10 pounds less than it normally is elsewhere. If you do not yet have the game, now is a good time to buy it.

Cheers,
Picotrain

(edit: with shipping it came to 53 dollars Canadian)

[Da_weasel]

I oredered mine and still waiting...order last week and I live near a magior airport..Washington Dulles International.

[lilmisswagonburner]

Wow folkes, thats really sad how much they are gettin for this game over there. I bought mine over 4 years ago here in us, and still see it here every once in a while for under 20.00 dollars. And I have no problem "shopping" and posting it to different places......