PlayStation users have been asking for years why the European PlayStation Store gets different content to the US store. The South African PlayStation store follows the European store, so it’s a question which we often hear local gamers asking too.
For the first time, Sony has issued a public explanation for the discrepancies between the US and EU PlayStation stores. According to Jawad Ashraf from the PlayStation Store Team, the differences essentially come down to licensing.
“Licensing, market and a host of other business and non-business decisions all play a part,” he said on the PlayStation Blog.
“What is often forgotten is the EU consists of not just one or two countries – it includes a variety (36!), meaning a lot more localising must be done. Certain games also retain licenses only in certain territories or have expired rights.”
“There’s generally so many factors that can often lead to games being delayed or totally cancelled for specific regions, and sometimes this cannot be helped.”
Recently, Trine 2 was delayed by 2 months on the EU PlayStation Store, with developer Frozenbyte explaining that the EU PSN version was delayed going through Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s QA process.
According to Ashraf, there is a lot of secrecy surrounding release dates for games on the EU PlayStation Store or if they’ve passed QA because “QA is highly confidential information and we are not permitted to communicate it.”
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