• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sony continues to sabotage certain European PS Stores

myco666

Member
All of them. You could enter your phone number on Anttila's website to get a text message, then you show the message on your phone and a Plussa at the checkout. It was 30% off any game, very sweet. It happened on Bloodborne release week, which was some great timing.

I guess I need to get Plussa card now then. That is really great discount.

I'm actually going to say no. At some point in 2014 some €60 games became €62 and some €70 games became €73 for no reason. GTAV on PS3 was €70 when it came out, but became €73 after this mysterious Finnish price increase. This even happened across publishers. GTAV on PS4 launched at €70 though, so it's not consistent at all!

And this does not happen on Xbox or Steam, this 2-3€ increase is only on PSN.

Umm.. just checked my store and can't find any games with 2-3€ increase in price. (BF Hardline was 69,95 for me.)
 

Gradon

Member
So just buy them from the US store then like everybody in Europe can and does. Problem solved.

It shouldn't have to be this way, SCEE are incompetent and they should sort themselves out.

I'm actually going to say no. At some point in 2014 some €60 games became €62 and some €70 games became €73 for no reason. GTAV on PS3 was €70 when it came out, but became €73 after this mysterious Finnish price increase. This even happened across publishers. GTAV on PS4 launched at €70 though, so it's not consistent at all!

When I asked Idea Factory International about pricing they said to me "According to Sony's European Price Grid, Re;Birth1 should be 31.99 GBP. :)."
It seems to be that SCEE requires the publisher to choose from their "set prices."
 
Umm.. just checked my store and can't find any games with 2-3€ increase in price. (BF Hardline was 69,95 for me.)

It seems it changed. Battlefield Hardline went on sale at the beginning of April, reducing it from 73 to 55. Seems like they corrected it to 70 when the discount ended. That just makes it even weirder.
 

Labadal

Member
I never thought about this.

That's why some pages are translated in an absolutely abysmal way here in Sweden. One example would be Tears of Tiara 2.
 
This seems to be a good thread to compile what else SCEE is fucking up all the time on the store. I was thinking of doing something like this anyway because something really needs to change. It has become very obvious that SCEE is mismanaged or incompetent in this department. Some of these may be in the responsibility of the publisher, but since most of them do not happen on the US store SCEE at the very least has lacking quality control

- DOA5 LR DLC was supposed to be cross-buy with DOA5 Ultimate, but that functionality wasn't working at all. The fix came only a few weeks ago and some pieces are supposedly still missing. No problems in the US store as far as I know.

- Something similar with Rockband DLC but I don't know the details, just that there were complaints on the PS Blog for months

- New PSP games are released without Vita compatibility and fixed either very late or never. The recent release of Brandish was an outlier since the fix only took a day, but it was released as PSP only at first. Same thing happens in the US often but fixes are more frequent and faster.

- Content is wrongly marked as downloadable on PS3 or Vita when it isn't. I'm not talking about Vita games being downloadable to PS3 for transferring. There are at least 5 pieces of content on my Vita DL list that should be PS3 only but gives me the option to start a download on Vita and then throws an error message. (Project Diva F 2nd DLC and Resogun for example)

- The Vita version of Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters was listed on the store but had no purchase button for at least a month since release.

- Going into the theme shop on the PS4 through "Settings" opens the store on an empty page

Those are just a few examples of shit that goes wrong on the EU store every single week. Combined with things that suck about PSN anyway like download lists, the store pages on consoles and the things mentioned in this thread, EU PSN is in a very problematic state imo.
 

Kaybe

Unconfirmed Member
Damn. Never knew this was the case. Glad our store isn't translated then!
Oh it's coming.
I don't think Saudi Arabia is in Europe.
They're still at the mercy of SCEE. Same with Australia and New Zealand.
Combine that with patches taking forever or goes missing, a lot of Rocksmith DLC never getting released making fans angered (apparently this is being resolved), other games sometimes getting mysteriously delayed for days (Monpiece, Project Diva) or weeks (Rorona Plus Vita) and them not even making PS1 games Vita compatible until some day later, even though they announced that they will be compatible. (Vib-ribbon, Suikoden II).

They need people with common sense over there who cares, badly. It can't be that hard.
 
If this requirement doesn't stop more countries will get excluded and in the end some games will only release in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Awesome, right?
Who can I send my compaints to?

You're sure it's not an EU requirement or something similar? Sony has no reason to care. However, if countries with other language accept games that are only in English, that's all they'll get. Governments tend to care about that.

I like to keep my console settings to English, but I have a friend who doesn't. He prefers to play his games in his natural language. Still, I wouldn't play a game like AC:Unity--if it was worth playing--in British English.

In the end, it should be like movies at the theater. Are movies in English in you area?
 

Kaybe

Unconfirmed Member
You're sure it's not an EU requirement or something similar? Sony has no reason to care. However, if countries with other language accept games that are only in English, that's all they'll get. Governments tend to care about that.

I like to keep my console settings to English, but I have a friend who doesn't. He prefers to play his games in his natural language. Still, I wouldn't play a game like AC:Unity--if it was worth playing--in British English.

In the end, it should be like movies at the theater. Are movies in English in you area?
All store descriptions were in English before 2012 here in Sweden. The Nintendo eShop is also completely in English here. I don't think it has anything to do with EU regulations, it's just that Sony insists on having everything translated or else they won't bother. Almost everybody here knows English.

And regarding movies, it's mostly kids movies and such that are getting dubbed, everything else is in English and may or may not be subtitled.
 
So just buy them from the US store then like everybody in Europe can and does. Problem solved.

This is really just creating problems where there aren't any. Sony is great when it comes to the region freedom of their online stores.

Holy shit. This is the most ridiculous post I've seen on this site. How on earth could you even write that with a straight face?!
 
Canada sometimes doesn't get certain games too, specifically Arcsys titles like Magical Beat, and Unsigned Legacy (which we did eventually get many months later.)
 
The belgian psn store was borked for me (and countless others when looking for the problem on youtube) for over a year.
It would simply hard lock the system when trying to click on the download page for anything.
The only way to access demos n shit was to go to their awful PSN website on my pc and add it to my account there.

The local branches of SOE simply do not give a fuck.
 

Noaloha

Member
Just skimmed through that link; how shitty. Speaks volumes if that's a normal state of affairs each month. :/

I've only had a PS4 and accompanying PSN account for a month or so. Not being aware of this issue, or the poor state of EU PSN in general when compared to US, I'd gone ahead and signed the PS+ account up as a Swedish one.

The sentiment in this thread seems to suggest that I might have fucked up by doing that, at least in the sense of hobbling my purchasing options. :/
 

Three

Member
If this requirement doesn't stop more countries will get excluded and in the end some games will only release in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Awesome, right?
Who can I send my compaints to?

To the people who don't submit the games with the required language description?
I mean it's in their best interest, right?
They should submit with the required information or procedure to be available in as many stores as possible.

There surely must be more to this than just a translated store description if there are publishers that are still refusing to do it even with offers of free translations from the community?

I can on the one hand see why Sony may want all of their stores content to be in the native language of that country, but at the end of the day it is a little pedantic when the actual content being sold isn't translated anyway.

I assume this is a liability issue. Sony cannot put a description and sell somebody's product in another country and assume it is OK. The liability will fall on them.
 

Kaybe

Unconfirmed Member
Sorry for the bump but today's store update reminded me of this thread.
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/04/29/new-playstation-store-metal-slug-3-broken-age-tropico-5/
So many restrictions in which countries the games are and aren't released.
There were unfortunately always differences between individual SCEE PSN stores in the past but instead of fixing this it's just getting worse.
I was going to bump this thread for exactly this but I'm glad people remembered it. This has to be the worst week in... forever, I think.
Just skimmed through that link; how shitty. Speaks volumes if that's a normal state of affairs each month. :/

I've only had a PS4 and accompanying PSN account for a month or so. Not being aware of this issue, or the poor state of EU PSN in general when compared to US, I'd gone ahead and signed the PS+ account up as a Swedish one.

The sentiment in this thread seems to suggest that I might have fucked up by doing that, at least in the sense of hobbling my purchasing options. :/
If you're only going to use home consoles, it won't be that much of a problem. You can make other accounts and buy stuff from them. It's when you use it on a Vita it becomes maddening, because it's limited to only one account.
To the people who don't submit the games with the required language description?
I mean it's in their best interest, right?
They should submit with the required information or procedure to be available in as many stores as possible.
If it only was that easy. I have contacted some publishers and all I've got was "it's coming, hold on" or nothing. I have in particular been tweeting and mailing Arc System Works PR company and Natsume multiple times, they couldn't care less, even when I offered to translate whatever they threw at me for free. Hell, I even compiled a list of every store page description (all games, DLCs and bundles) that Arc System Works has on PSN and translated them by myself and mailed them to them. They didn't even check them out, I doubt they even opened the mail.
Some publishers just machine translate it and it works out totally fine. It's better than literally nothing.
Now I feel like this is just getting out of hand (just look at the blog post) and I'm just wasting my time. I'd like to talk with someone who's responsible for all of this because I think it's unreasonable that they straight out make it unavailable if the publisher refuse to even machine translate it. They could make a disclaimer or something that says that there's no description in that particular language or something.
I assume this is a liability issue. Sony cannot put a description and sell somebody's product in another country and assume it is OK. The liability will fall on them.
Sony did that on some of the affected stores earlier, they still do in some non-English countries. Nintendo does it for many countries on the European eShop. I don't think it's that big of an issue, Sony are just being petty.
 

Kaybe

Unconfirmed Member
The Arabic store is live just as I suspected, and today I see this on the store update post:

The Jackbox Party Pack
(Not available Bahrain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, India, Israel, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ukraine, UAE)

Angus hates Aliens
Not available in Bahrain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Findland, Iceland, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, UAE

I haven't seen Bulgaria, Cyprus, Iceland, Malta, Romania or Slovakia get excluded so you guys might be next in line!
 

VLiberty

Member
And it's claimed yet another victim. Two more, actually. 1001 Spikes and VVVVVV aren't out in european non english-speaking countries, cause Nicalis couldn't be arsed to translate the store descriptions even in the mainland languages, and Sony won't let the game release here. Meanwhile, 1001 Spikes is alive and kicking on my local eshop store, just like VVVVVV, though with just a brief english description. But it's there.


This is so stupid for every part involved.
 

woopWOOP

Member
Is this the reason Front Mission 3 can't be found on the Dutch PSN store?

Reconnected the damn console when PSN Europe had that Japan Summer Sale or whatever and I saw it listed, but I never found it browsing the store. I was pissed.
 

Shin

Banned
Switzerland who uses German, French and Italian sometimes get excluded for some mysterious reason.

I know it's not the point, but how would they do this though, IIRC the country is "split" into 3 different languages so how could even cater that?
 
So small publishers either

1. Dont even know about the requirements
2. Think that translating a few lines of text is not worth the effort

And despite pretending to be "all about the games" SCEE doesn't really seem to care about it either

The whole situation is so dumb and unnecessary but no one is doing anything about it or calling them out since the games are small and it only affects small markets

fuck
 

Kaybe

Unconfirmed Member
And it's claimed yet another victim. Two more, actually. 1001 Spikes and VVVVVV aren't out in european non english-speaking countries, cause Nicalis couldn't be arsed to translate the store descriptions even in the mainland languages, and Sony won't let the game release here. Meanwhile, 1001 Spikes is alive and kicking on my local eshop store, just like VVVVVV, though with just a brief english description. But it's there.


This is so stupid for every part involved.
Yeah, this is also pretty weird due to Nicalis CEO Tyrone was apparently unaware of the unavailability. What are they even doing?

Fun fact: If your store doesn't have Phantom Breaker Battlegrounds Overdrive (PS4) then you won't be able to buy the Kurisu for the Vita version anymore due to them retroactively making their DLCs a crossbuy bundle, and if Overdrive is unavailable, so is the DLC, along with the Vita DLC being crossbundled with it.

What's strange is that Nicalis, 5pb and ASW use the same localization or/and PR company and they all have very poor EU PSN availability. If they're the root of their problems then Adventures of Pip will probably share a similar fate on EU PSN.
 
What's strange is that Nicalis, 5pb and ASW use the same localization or/and PR company and they all have very poor EU PSN availability. If they're the root of their problems then Adventures of Pip will probably share a similar fate on EU PSN.
yeah this seems to be the common factor here. What are they called again?

They're doing a terrible job at putting stuff on EU PSN. No idea why companies keep using them
 

FDC1

Member
And it's claimed yet another victim. Two more, actually. 1001 Spikes and VVVVVV aren't out in european non english-speaking countries, cause Nicalis couldn't be arsed to translate the store descriptions even in the mainland languages, and Sony won't let the game release here. Meanwhile, 1001 Spikes is alive and kicking on my local eshop store, just like VVVVVV, though with just a brief english description. But it's there.


This is so stupid for every part involved.

Both games are available in France
 
Both games are available in France

Yeah the availability seems random. Not available in Italy and Germany for example.

EDIT: Another fun fact: Sony apparenty doesn't even care what kind of metadata you submit. This is a description on the German store (it's polish I think?)
ltvKGUQ.png

Not to mention completely unreadable machine translations are also a-ok

So why does this requirement even exist in the first place?
 

Kaybe

Unconfirmed Member
yeah this seems to be the common factor here. What are they called again?

They're doing a terrible job at putting stuff on EU PSN. No idea why companies keep using them
Strangely Compelling (lol)

Natsume is also one of the companies that are equally as awful at publishing in Europe but I think they manage their stuff on their own.
Both games are available in France
Yeah, most of these companies only puts it in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish stores and calls it a day. Maybe they'll add another language if they feel like it.

Maybe in this case they just translated it to English, French and Spanish due to USA, Canada and Mexico. Bleh.
I also wish that they would list unavailabilities on the PS Store update posts again because I think 1001 Spikes would be the most unavailable game so far. Would be like watching a trainwreck.
 
Maybe it's a legal requirement ?
I suppose all the ratings, etc... have to be in the local language. Maybe the game description too ?
It can stop people buying a game by mistake too, if they don't know what they read.

Also, for someone who doesn't understand English it might be annoying to click on a game and then not understand what it is because it's in English, not their language
 

GametimeUK

Member
Our store still doesn't have Counter Strike for PS3. The last official word I remember hearing is that it is coming soon. They ignore all questions regarding it to this day. Nothing the European store does surprises me. It was one of the reasons I'm now a PC gamer. I love Sony, but damn the store is a joke over here and to make matters worse we are a huge, supportive terriroty so they are in no need to improve.
 

Kaybe

Unconfirmed Member
Maybe it's a legal requirement ?
I suppose all the ratings, etc... have to be in the local language. Maybe the game description too ?
It can stop people buying a game by mistake too, if they don't know what they read.

Also, for someone who doesn't understand English it might be annoying to click on a game and then not understand what it is because it's in English, not their language
The age ratings requirement is understandable and it's not what this thread is about.

And what would be the point if the store description is in your native language, but the game is only in English (and maybe FR/IT/GE/SP)? Why is it necessary to outright deny people that wants a game to purchase and play it just to please that small group of people that needs their description despite maybe not being able to understand the game?
They don't even care if it's a machine translated mess or if it's in the wrong language by mistake (the Arabic stores got VVVVVV Vita due to this, but not the PS4 version or 1001 Spikes). Some countries does even have an English AND a [country language] store, yet they still doesn't get the games.
It's just an incredibly dumb and hypocritical requirement. May EU save us.
 
Top Bottom