Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition dated for Europe.

[Umon Daisuke]

Mark your calenders, it's out on June 29 across PAL territories.

Source: Neogaf

[Umon Daisuke]

$60 for what's essentially a GC version with PS2 extras.. brilliant.

[Carnivol]

GC never really properly dropped in price in Europe.
(Nintendo pretty much has a long history of not dropping in price here, actually)

As for the price, that's a pretty common/typical price.
Play.com actually lists it at £39.99 right now, which is $80, with a release date of 31st of August.

Reason for these higher European prices has something to do with a different economical standard, the average income for a people in most parts of Europe, additional taxes and covering of additional localization expenses required for the additional languages.

[Dot50Cal]

In other words, Its rape time!

[James]

Australia always gets f*cked over in terms of pricing. A budget title in the US costs about 30-40% more than what you guys would pay for it =P

[Carnivol]

Just to take a quick rundown of some prices;

Currently, a next gen title costs about 650,- NKR in Norway, which is about $110 by today's NKR->USD rates.

In 2000, the "big" N64 titles (Banjo Tooie, Conker, Perfect Dark, i.e. Rare's big stuff) cost 1000,- NKR, which is almost $170 USD by today's rate, but if we compare rates as they were back then, pre-9/11, the USD vs NKR difference was almost twice as strong as it is today. So back then it was only $80-90-ish USD.

NES games used to cost 600~700,- ish here, while SNES dropped to 500-600,-. GB/GBA/DS are mostly 400-500,-.
PSX has been between 300~500. PS2 was 400~600,-. The GameCube was 500~700,-, same with the Wii.



To be honest, the "price bitching" people are somewhat doing is more or less the results of the increased amount and availability of good/worth-to-have titles a year for a system and the decreased amount of time a person is willing to spend a title. And ofcourse, the somewhat spoiling through cheaper alternatives (First it was swapping games that was big, then came rent+copy and now it's replaced by downloading).

And, ofcourse, the fact that we keep comparing prices with the US, is somewhat wrong, as the value of the USD has gone down while the value of other currencies has increased. Though, ofcourse, in one way would make sense if game prices would go down because of that, but then again, Euro regions are depending on additional localizations/translations and the majority of the expensive console games with a high price tag are non-american titles, so you shouldn't be considering the US price as a guideline as that's not the region the majority of the workload put into the production of the product originates from.

[Umon Daisuke]

To be honest, the "price bitching" people are somewhat doing is more or less the results of the increased amount and availability of good/worth-to-have titles a year for a system and the decreased amount of time a person is willing to spend a title.

The increased amount bit is something I'd strongly disagree with, considering that the market is flooded with mediocre titles. I must've bought 7 games total last year, including two multiple versions, then again I'm not into gaming as I used to be years ago. Games in general aren't as expensive nowadays, but the abundance of budget titles compared to any other time in history spoiled people. I mainly imported from 99-2004, so any increase up to $80USD is fine by me. Games cost $65USD equivalents in Japan for over a decade after all, with some going for $75+.

BUT in the context of this particular issue on hand, it's absurd. This isn't a new game by any means, and even the US version should be $20.. we know that the so-called port didn't cost that much. I reckon it's another Nintendo royalty related issue like the GC ports of RE2-CV... Now those were real rip offs.

Localization costs aren't that much.. it's slave labour everywhere, and all you need is working knowledge of particular languages.

[Carnivol]

Localization costs aren't that much.. it's slave labour everywhere, and all you need is working knowledge of particular languages.

Only thing you're somewhat right about there is the part about slave labor. European localization is a costly business that requires quite a lot of hard work from many parties and mostly just professional people that doesn't just fall into the category of "knowledgable in particular languages".

[Umon Daisuke]

Only thing you're somewhat right about there is the part about slave labor. European localization is a costly business that requires quite a lot of hard work from many parties and mostly just professional people that doesn't just fall into the category of "knowledgable in particular languages".

I'm speaking from knowledge of localization practices for a few publishers worldwide. If a few publishers choose the harder (correct) road of outsourcing, they're a rarity. Just because someone has working knowledge of a language, it doesn't make them any less proffessional than any other worker. They're just not necessarily language majors as you would expect them to be.

The slave labour comment stands... then again, the same can be said for the average game developer.

[Carnivol]

I can confirm however that the German translations are from people "knowledgable" in the German language. The translations for the RE series are downright bad. An example from RE4 - the translated "I thought he was with you" (Leon talking to Saddler about Krauser) to something that can be translated back to "I thought he was standing next to you", they thought the comment was referring to the location of Krauser (which is pretty ridiculous because Leon defeated him on the platform that exploded moments later and he didn't know that he escaped), not to Saddler's relationship to Krauser.

Did Capcom do that localization themselves, or was it outsourced to someone like U-Trax?
What usually happens in cases like that is that someone's been stupid and recorded all audio fresh from the translated text, pre- editing/in-game polishing. The reason why the original translation was bad wasn't because of a mis-translation, but simply 'cause of the dev team failing at including proper contextual information for their text (or failing at having a proper structure, so multiple translators might be handling strings from the same dialog exchange).

A couple of years ago, I had that problem on a project, and the budget + the time left before the deadline just didn't allow for re-recording.