Topic: Nintendo DS price and game prices

[Uncle Rich AiAi]

To add more to KDR's post about the difference b/w PAL and NTSC:

PAL has 625 horizontal lines at 25fps
NTSC has 525 horizontal lines at 29.97fps

[Jale]

How hard is it to change the resolutions?

[KDR_11k]

Well, if you have GUI elements that are adjusted to certain screen positions, quite hard. What if suddently the pixels no longer match up? That's ugly. You'd have to redo them or at least squash them a bit. That's not as easy as it sounds since buttons, gauges and texts have to be repositoned.

[Jale]

It stil really doesn't accunt for the large amount of tme that it takes a game to cross the pond. Some games are developed in the UK for crying out loud and they are released on both formats at the same time. I think its just the developers being lazy and selfish.

[KDR_11k]

Keep in mind that the PAL version also includes additional languages. You might say "then why not release an English-only PAL version first?" but that would A. undermine their import block, they'd have to make GCs that only play english or other language PAL games to prevent people from importing from the UK to continental Europe and B. it's more expensive to produce multiple versions of the same game. They have one manufacturing plant for all of Europe, they'd need to produce two versions of every game and thus reduce the output per game. Also, the games couldn't be shipped between regions (e.g. a game sells badly in the UK but is in high demand in Spain, you'd have to scrap a whole lot of copies and produce new ones for Spain). I think the reduced manufacturing cost is also why Australia gets the same discs and Cubes as Europe.

[joeamis]

Is it easier to convert from PAL to NTSC or from NTSC to PAL?

[Jale]

I think they would solve it all if they made a detatchment of NOA that was devoted to converting the games for us and the ozzies. It wouldn't even have to be a big group. That Anglo-Spanish scenario is one of the problems with the system! It's not cheap to move copies from the UK to the continent. If they covered us with another group then if the game didnt do well it wouldn't do well, just like in America.

[KDR_11k]

joe: Doesn't make a difference.

Jale: It would be even worse if they had to ship them from the US to the UK. I think the current system is the cheapest thing they could set up. I'm not sure how the other manufacturers handle this, though (but I think I heard similar complaints on the XBox). Also I'm not sure whether the UK and the rest of Europe are individually large enough markets to warrant two subsidiaries for covering them.

[Jale]

Im not asking for one for just the Uk it should also cover Australiasia.

THat is a large number of people that are already buying games but getting pissed off that we have to wait MONTHS for games. ToS Is only just being ADVERTISED here!

[KDR_11k]

... They already advertise ToS?

[odifiend]

More like they advertise ToS at all?  In America the game has been out for about 2 weeks and I have yet to see any ads.

[Jale]

Yeh but the game isnt even available for preorder from GAME yet.