Question for the European and Australian gamers

[mrandyk]

Do you guys own North American or region modded consoles so that you can play the North American versions of the games instead of waiting for your own? The amount of time you guys have to wait for the games to come out in your homeland after North America is ridiculous.

Im sure it isnt cheap to import the games, but correct me if im wrong, but dont the games actually cost more in your country than they do in America? After a quick search on Amazon.co.uk games go for roughly 30-40£ (60-80$ approximately).

I know that if I lived in one of those areas and had enough money I would go for the imported North American version of the games.

[Christuserloeser]

I tend to prefer Japanese games so I will be buying a Japanese Wii I think.

But to answer your question: I stopped buying PAL hardware since quite a while. My last PAL hardware was the GC in 2003. The big problem isn't the money (although it's a very good point too), it's the huuuge PAL borders and 50Hz speed. Most Japanese/North-American games just run 20% slower and only use 75% of the screen. What's there looks oddly distorted; like if you would run 4:3 movie stretched to fill a 16:9 screen.

All the variants I have of the systems I collect (DC, MD/G, SAT) are either modified and/or US/JP machines.

[az_bont]

Once the cost of postage is taken into account, including the possibility of a ridiculous amount of import duty being applied, there is little or no saving to be made, though I only really looked at a couple of Canadian sites I used to buy DVDs from--perhaps the more favourable exchange rate with the US dollar might make it more worthwhile.

PAL gamers looking for more immediate availability of games, without a botched conversion and at a cheaper price are, however, much more likely to simply get their console chipped.

[Skynet]

I just wait and get PAL releases from Australia. I do have a few imports, but I wasn't aware of them being imports until after I bought them. They're on 360 so it makes no difference. As for anything else, I have a few NTSC games for my Cube. My XBox is modded, so that's a bonus. As for anything else, I pretty much just emulate it. But pretty much I just buy PAL releases here.

[not just souLLy now]

I always have such a long list of games I want to play that have been released but I haven't bought yet, that I'm never that concerned about waiting a couple of months longer for something US gamers are playing. We're so used to being shafted anyway that it's hardly upsetting anymore.