PSN Guilty Gear Accent Core+ still eluding Europe

Guilty Gear AC+ was released last week in North American region. Japan has had the game for some time now. Where’s Europe’s slice of this deal

Originally the game was supposed to appear on digital stores around the end of summer. Then it went by and nothing came. Then again, people do have a variety of opinions on when summer ends, so I didn’t give itmuch thought. However, a few months ago I grew impatient, and now that there’s no news on PAL region release, I’ve given up.

This is not good service.

I want to say that they lost a customer with this kind of inaction. When the PSN release was announced, fighting game community got excited, and now we Europeans are left out in the cold. Literally, if you take notice that it’s -18c outside now. I find it interesting that there are actually regions that were left without the game overall and the game’s director wanted to know if these regions would like to have the game.

Why do this kind of stupid children’s play with digital downloads? I see no reason to call digital distribution easier foranyone when things like this arefar too common. I see no reason of any sorts that would keep digital games from being released across the world at the same time. Yes, I know there are legal questions and all, but those are secondary questions and easily avoided with proper agreements.

If digital distribution is not any easier and far more reaching that physical store distribution, why bother? While it’s true that I could just open NA account and purchase NA PSN points, it defeats the purpose of having it digitally. Importing aphysical copy had its merits like the 60Hz NTCS instead of 50Hz PAL for an old example and simply getting better game optimization as in Devil May Cry 2’s case. With consoles nowadays, especially with the HD twins, there is no real reason to divide sales regions like this at all.

To be fair, I have bought few Japanese PSN releases. These games are games that would never see light in the west, but GGAC+ is clearly a game that sees a PSN release in Europe as well, right?

They’re doing it almost right with Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus

Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus is hitting PSN and 360Live on late October. This is much later than I anticipated and I can’t but feel that the new BlazBlue has been reason for this. It’s stupid; why to push BB onwards when GG is the superior of two products and has already larger customer base? Well, the answer might be that BB has also a solid customer base, but these two overlap greatly. Persona 4 Arena most likely took out resources as well, and I’m not completely with that game either.

I find it extremely good that they’re releasing AC+ before updating it to R version. Whatever the R version brings in, be it character balances and s forth, it’s good to show the base product and then evolve it. It doesn’t detract anything from the game, but I can see problems arising when people state that they need to re-learn some things. There’s also the question whether or not the update will be an actual update or will it be DLC. If it will be DLC, then they’re doing it wrong.

I see ArcSys testing Guilty Gear with this game again in and out of arcades. If it succeeds, then I can see ArcSys actually starting to put effort into the next Guilty Gear, which I hope will be Guilty Gear X3 rather than just 3. ArcSys needs to give Guilty Gear same class of budget as they have given to BlazBlue, much like Nintendo needs to give same amount of budget to 2D Marios as 3D Marios have. There’s no reason to treat your most selling franchise like a third class product.

Now, what could they do more right with GGAC+R? Add all the stages from previous games as well as all the musics, as well as characters. There’s no reason to take anything out. All of these do not take anything from the game and only stack on the content. What this kind of release needs is content, and GG does have content that could be used.

In general we could ask why the hell are developers taking out content from their games and not adding them?

But I have to say, that I do love how they added the R into the logo. It stands out, uses good colour choice and most of all does signal a change of sorts.

But seriously ArcSys, it’s a time for a completely new Guilty Gear fighting gamer after this.