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In September, something smelled fishy. EA went out of their way to say that Dead Space had been "banned" in Germany, Japan and China, when really, nothing of the sort had transpired.
"Chess" is the last thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Sonic the Hedgehog. There are other things we think of first. Regardless, leave it to the Germans to make a Sonic the Hedgehog chess board.
The gist: Woman hates games. Gets mad. Calls EA "that pig of a company." EA requests apology.
Earlier this week, we noticed that the German box art for Left 4 dead had been edited. Some gore removed, an extra digit added. Well, EA have let us know that only one of the game's boxes has been edited. The game's other box - yes, it's shipping with two covers - is OK! Turns out the game will ship with a paper sleeve. This sleeve, which is all you'll be able to see when looking at the game on a store shelf, has the edited image. But when you get the game home and remove the sleeve, you'll see the actual DVD case, which has the regular, thumbless, geddit-zombies-eat-thumbs cover. From humourless to efficient! We've run the gamut of German stereotypes in less than a week.
The Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle, or USK, are Germany's classification board. And as you may already be aware, they're a conservative bunch, banning games that even Australia let slide. But this, this is new. Witness Germany's box art for Valve's upcoming zombie co-op shooter, Left 4 Dead. Notice anything, uh, different?
Predictable. And in more ways than one. According to Epic, Gears of War 2 won't be seeing a release in either Germany or Japan, thanks to the game's level of violence and gore. Seeing as the first one wasn't released in Germany, that's no surprise. But Japan? Why isn't it being released in Japan? The first one was, despite its "Z" (adults only) rating, and it did pretty well for a Western game, selling over 30k units. Heck, Microsoft even held a Z-rated party last year celebrating the fact they release adults-only games. So what gives?
Remember the recent news that Dead Space has been banned in China, Japan, and Germany? Well, GamePolitics isn't buying it, saying the news doesn't pass the 'smell test' for a variety of reasons. Dead Space cleared both Australia's 'notoriously censorious' OFLC and the UK's BBFC (the same commission that banned Manhunt 2); Germany perhaps makes sense, but "Japan? The home of Resident Evil?"; and, oh yeah, the lack of any word from EA on the issue:
Germany, you probably knew this was coming, given Dead Space's focus on blowing humanoid heads into fuck-all, but you won't be getting your hands on the EA LA developed sci-fi horror game. And you won't either, certain Asian territories. That's according to the title's community manager Ben Swanson, who writes on the game's official blog "we've recently found out that Dead Space will be banned in Germany, China and Japan".
And by "banned" we can assume that, at least in Germany's case, Dead Space was refused classification by the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle, as many graphically violent games have been before it.
In Japan's case, we're not quite sure if Dead Space was "banned" or given a dreaded sales-killing Z-rating by the CERO ratings board, making it essentially a money losing venture to release it in that country.
And China? No idea.
In Germany, when not outright refused, as in the case of Gears of War, Army of Two and Crackdown, some titles have their content noticeably sanitised — see The Darkness. Based on our experiences with Dead Space, cleaning up the game would take some serious effort.
You know what else is sanitized in Germany? The public restrooms. The Germans know how to keep a toilet clean, people.
Good News Bad News [Dead Space via GameSpot]
Germany's Xbox 360 product manager Boris Schneider-Johne slightly mehs exclusives. They are so not important. While exclusives were more important in the 1980s and 1990s, he says, they are not anymore. Explains Schneider-Johne:
What we see today is that the influence of exclusive titles on the sales curves becomes ever smaller... In addition, we are in a situation where there is a head-to-head race on several consoles and nobody is super clear in leadership — especially in matters of the PlayStation 3 against Xbox 360... Given the production costs of the games, it is hardly possible for developers to commit themselves exclusively to someone...
Now Sony makes its own games for the [PS3] console, we make our own games for the [Xbox 360] console. The titles are exclusive, as they are also attempts [to] turn out the best of the console, but someone like Electronic Arts or Activision can have a business model of rarely developing for a console exclusively. Therefore, the exclusive title is a little less important.
These days it's all about the timed exclusives — well, mostly. Are you willing to wait. Well, are you?
Interview mit Boris Schneider-Johne [Golem via GameRush via Games Industry]
While the food was certainly better than E3's, there's one other thing about Leipzig that trumps LA's resident trade show: it's open to the public. And the public, they come in droves. Indeed, this year's Games Convention set a new record for attendance, 203,000 people passing through the Leipziger Messe's doors over the course of the show. That's a lot of people. More than TGS, even.
