What’s the logic behind that?
Example: The Xbox 360 game Forza Motorsport 2 was released last year and has been successful in North America and Europe. Since then, the developer/publisher has been selling stuff for the game you can download through Xbox Live.
Now they are releasing Forza Motorsport 2 Platinum Hits, which includes the game and all the downloads, amongst other things – but only in North America.
Why would a publisher do that?
The publishing approval process for console is completely for Europe and US, you have to go through a ton of hassle getting your game approved by Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo for the different territories (not to mention the usually distribution and marketing costs). I assuming they made calculation that that extra hassle and cost of shipping in Europe was not worth it for a title that was never gonna ship that many units.
Maybe in this particular case it’s still selling well enough in Europe that they don’t need to release the cheaper Platinum Hits version.
Localizing for the European market is a non-trivial exercise. Most titles are translated into EFIGS (English/French/Italian/German/Spanish) and major releases may be released in 9 or more different languages.
Localized titles have to go through a full round of testing in the new territory. And as griffin1977 points out each territory has its own set of approval hoops to jump through. Each territory has its own ratings board that must be dealt with. The bottom line is that publishing in a different territory is not as simple as just shipping the boxes over.
Someone at the publisher probably did a cost/benefit analysis and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort.
Or maybe they’re just being stupid. That happens too … .