I vaguely recall at university being told that movie release dates differed across the world to reduceproduction costs. A limited number of reels would be produced, and a film would be shown in the US before the same reels were shipped to Europe and beyond.
So why do computer games seem to have different release dates globally? Is it purely a local marketing decision? Is it down to delays in shipping from the manufacturer?
Basically I’m interested in modern justifications for differences in media release dates from country to country.
There could be many reasons for this. In general the underlying cause is that company X wants to start making money on their investment as soon as possible.
So, other countries may have to wait while a translated version is being produced. Or perhaps company X contracts with company Y to press all the disks and company Y only has capacity to fill-up one market at a time. Maybe company X only has enough money to press the first hundred-thousand disks, recoups its investment and embarks on the next bunch. Perhaps there is legal junk that needs to be hashed through as you try to comply with various countries import laws.
Those are just a few possibilities…there are probably plenty more people could think up.
In the case of computer games, the manual and packaging may need to be translated (even if the game does not. ) If the game does need to be translated, parts of the text may need to be rewritten to make sense to the local culture. Speech may need to be re-recorded in the local language. Some products have huge amounts of text and speech, and thus localization can be very time consuming.
The game may also need to be approved/rated by the local ratings bureau. The code may need to be changed for various reasons (e.g. changing the interface to deal with different types of text, changing content to meet local regulations, etc.) If discs or packages are exported to the local country, there are import laws to deal with.
Then there are wrangles over legal issues, payments, and contracts, which can delay international releases even more.
So the game may be completed anywhere from a month to a year or more before the international partners are ready to distribute the product. As Whack-a-Mole says, the publisher wants to start recouping their investment as soon as possible. Rather than wait for all their international partners to get their ducks in a row, most publishers will just go ahead and publish the game at home first.