Hi, since I’m new to the blog I wanted to first introduce myself. I am the line producer on Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and I work with Naughty Dog on a day-to-day basis and have been working with the team since Crash Team Racing.
We are pleased to see that there is so much interest out there in the Uncharted demo, and wanted to provide a quick update.
As many of you in Europe and Japan may have already learned, today’s demo is currently only available on the North American PlayStation Store, and will only work on PS3 units in that territory. As you may already know, North America is the first region to launch Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (Monday, November 19th), and we wanted to be sure that we gave our North American PS3 players the opportunity to try out the demo prior to launch. Other territories are currently putting the finishing touches on the localization aspects of the Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune demo, and will release it in their respective PlayStation Stores in due course.
Unfortunately when attempting to download the demo, our friends in PAL regions or Japan may have encountered a bug in which you are asked to insert a disc. Please ignore this prompt and accept our apologies.
Thanks again for your interest in the game, we hope that those of you who do get a chance to play it get a taste for what we hope will become an action-adventure classic on the PS3.
Just wanted to add one more comment before the flames destroy this entire blog:
The demo has support for about 8 languages. That means TEXT and..wait for it..VOICE! I just played through it at lunch time with everyone yelling in German. So…this demo WAS intended for everyone, and due to the inclusion of all those languages, it’s clear that someone screwed up.
I seriously doubt that ND was trying to piss off half the globe with this mishap. If they intended this to be an NA release only, they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of putting so much extra audio in it and extra text for all the menus. Nobody in the US is going to select “portugese” for the audio language, so an NA demo doesn’t need it.
Thats … i cant believe that :) Sigh.
[DELETED] WHERES THE DEMO FIX. I WANT IT NOW BECAUSE I SAY SO AND I’M UNGRATEFUL FOR EVERYTHING, I JUST WANT SO GIVE THE DEMO FIX NOW PLEASE.
CMON WHERE THE FIX
OMG! … Sony, Naughty Dog … this feels aaakwaaard! and pisses me off bigtime! lame freakin excuse, egg on your face!
IM NOT WAITING 2 WEEKS YOU [DELETED], I WANT IT NOW SO I CAN PLAY NOW. I’M UNGRATEFUL FOR EVERYTHING GOD HAS GIVEN ME AND I DONT CARE BECAUSE I ONLY CARE ABOUT WHAT I WANT AND I WANT THIS DEMO NOW BECAUSE I SAY SO
So, the localization was allready made? This is getting ridiculous. If its all there whats the motivation?
this demo was amazing the graphics were great and the gameplay was really fun
Sony are you going to use region coded/locked games now?
Can someone explain why the difference in release dates? I mean its just 2 weeks. Wouldn’t it be alot smarter to have them all released the same date as in Europe?
Well from the user pictures posted at Gaf the game looks very nice, and Iam really looking forward to play it. Hopefully there will be a patch soon… very soon!
Still no official reply from Sammy boy :(
Is he still eating at McDonald’s?
@afrosheen.
“Awww, everyone is mad because they downloaded an out of region demo from another continent in another language.”
you fail to see the point. i own both an xbox 360 and a playstation 3. now microsoft manage for the most part to release games, trailers and downloadable content in all regions simultaneously. there are occasional content that are region specific, but that’s few and far between. not only that, most multi-platform games come out on xbox live weeks, even months before they reach PSN, if they even reach it at all. apparently the playstation 3 was the lead SKU for “sega rally: revo” but even that was reased weeks before it made it’s way to PSN, what a piss take that is.
now i’m talking about PSN in general at the moment, just showing you how much better in terms of content xbox live is in comparison to PSN. if you add to that the fact that not only do games reach PSN much later — and sometimes not at all — european PS3 owners have to wait even longer. as i said, for the most part the content is released simultaneously in all regions for xbox live. it could be months until it reaches my specific region on PSN and really there isn’t any point when it finally does reach PSN, cus i’ve already played the games, ages ago.
i don’t have another account for any other region for xbox live, i have absolutely no need to. if sony did the same thing most europeans wouldn’t find the need to use the US PSN either. basically, because PSN is so crap to begin with, this region-locking just seems like a slap in the face.
sony really need to get their act together.
oh i just want to add: by ‘games’ i’m talking specifically about ‘demos’. i wish you could edit your damn comments. :/
We want in game XMB!!!!111
…oh wait, wrong one
@Makasu
“If its all there whats the motivation?”
Ockham’s razor: “”All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one.
Why is it easier for people to believe that there’s a vast conspiracy behind this and not the simple fact that it was a mistake.
Sam even says it right there in his post:
“our friends in PAL regions or Japan may have encountered a bug”
See that last word in the quote? “Bug” Considering there’s no reason why SCE”A” would test to verify code on SCE”E” machines, it makes more sense that it was an “oops” than a “muh-hah-ha!”
Come On Sony, at least pretend that you care about Europe.
Why make us wait another two weeks for a demo, which by the way will come out on more or less the busiest release day of the year (23rd), and many of us will then be too busy playing full games to check out this demo.
At least make me want to buy a PS3 game, instead of Xbox360 all the time (23rd is the release date of Mass Effect by the way), so far what have we got to be excited about this year on the PS3?
Uncharted is something virtually every PS3 owner is looking forward to seeing, and the UK (Europe) gets left behind again. As for localisation, we speak ENGLISH here in England. Why not release the english lang version now in Europe with the localisation versions to follow, if that is all it really is?????
I bought the PS3 on Launch day for £425 (that $870 at todays rate), and so far I have yet to have a AAA game that jusifies my purchase, yet my 360 is being played daily.
Seriously Sony come on. Do the right thing, admit you made a mistake and release the US version to Europe today, not in two weeks.
Well, according to my watch its tomorrow and I dont see an update from line producer Sam Thompson…
HESH: According to my watch it’s about three hours shy of a full day since Sam posted. Maybe not quite time for pitchforks and burning torches?
So where’s the news from this Sam Thompson guy? It’s now 10:35pm GMT and still nothing.
I just feel sorry for the poor guy if he’s been instructed to tell us that the great news is that we’re lucky enough to be able to get our hands on the fully localised European demo on the 22nd November.
I could see that one going down well. ;)
@283
I thought it was cheaper because I wasn’t paying for a disc, a box, transport, and a ‘free headset’.
If they said for an extra $10 you can have another user play, it would have at least shown the are paying attention and understand that a lot of gamers actually share their console and go halves in games.
If Sony wants to make a strong online community they shouldn’t force me to play as my brother and only join unranked rooms so I don’t mess up his stats.
It seems that Sony’s whole business plan in regards to digital distribution and online is against the grain of how a games community works. Still no IM even, this is the stuff that really hurts them for such a ‘future-proof’ device.
Someone said it’s all coming and this may be true, but do people want ‘The future of gaming’ to be coupled with ‘Please Wait’
I noticed that the US store can watch a trailer as it downloads. Cant do that in the AU store.
Downloads can be nearly 5 times faster from the US than they are from the AU PSN.
Mr. Fusion: The ability to watch a trailer as it downloads was added with Firmware 2.0, and applies to all stores.
@Makasu
yes makasu, but sam also says:
“As many of you in Europe and Japan may have already learned, today’s demo is currently only available on the North American PlayStation Store, and will only work on PS3 units in that territory”
if you read the whole post it sounds to me like he is talking about the game being region-locked.
what if he means the insert disc error is a bug due to the demo being region-locked. do you get me?
maybe it’s not a bug that is stopping us from playing it, it’s just the message asking you to insert the disc is a bug due to it being region-locked.
i don;t really know to be honest, but i wouldn’t be surprised if they did try to region-lock the game in an attempt to keep other regions from stealing bandwidth, or whatever reason.
sorry i meant solace. again, the ability to edit would be nice.
@Solace:
He was referring to the insert-disc-bug, not the us-only-bug…
still one hour left until the end of his working day. 9 till 5
leadbelly: Naughty Dog aren’t incompetent. If this were a deliberate region lock then you’d get a nice message telling you the game couldn’t play on your hardware and it would quit neatly rather than crash out to either a black screen or an error message depending on whether the disc was in the drive.
sam get your ass here !!
@374
It doesn’t seem to work for me in the AU store, only get the play button when I access the US store.
Solace: Don’t make me have you killed.
Sorry, but I get upset at people who misuse Ockham’s razor – it says nothing about the correctness of the simpler explanation, just that it should be preferred. A simpler solution is no more likely to be correct, but it *is* more useful to work with the simpler solution until we discover facts that require the additional complexity. And it doesn’t use the word ‘simpler’, either, which is where most people mess it up horribly when they try to use it. “Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate” if you want to get it right. :P Or the more commonly referenced form: “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”.
What you’re really looking for here, of course, is Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
@iapetus
well, to be honest, i don’t generally use other accounts with xbox live as most games are release in all regions at the same time. i will confess to having downloaded a couple of japanese specific demos though and the one time, the demo was region-locked. of course there was no warning for this, nor did they have to give warning because it was a completely different region.
@leadbelly
what japanese demo was that?
EDIT: for iapetus
The button is there now, it wasn’t there yesterday. However it still stutters streaming form the AU PSN, but NOT the US PSN
Awesome game
i think it was one of the tenchu demos actually.
tenchu z i think when it originally went on to the japanese xbox live
oh 360.. i thought ps3 lol
[DELETED] sam, i’ve been looking at pron the laat 5 hours to pass the time, both my hands are tired now and still nothing…
@iapetus
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Nice quote (writes it down), but sounds like you’re saying that if this was an oversight (due to the fact that it doesn’t make sense for ND to test SCE”A” code on SCE”E” consoles) that ND is stupid?
Will someone, anyone, please explain to me how or why ND would or should have expected this to have been an issue when they aren’t testing code for the North American market on European consoles?
For all those (and Sony and Naughty Dog) that are calling this a bug – you are a bunch of arrogant liars. This demo would have had a number of weeks of QA INCLUDING running on other region machines. This is a DELIBERATE restriction of the software to stop others from playing it. Simple as that.
The fact Naughty Dog and Sony are calling this a bug shows how deceptive they are trying to be. How convienient to have a bug that ‘happens’ to stop NON-US PS3 owners to play a Demo – wow.. lucky bug!! The fact is, this is termed a ‘critical stop bug’ by Sony, and would have been flagged as such during QA – the only reason to make a release with such a ‘bug’ is if it ISNT a bug but an INTENDED feature.
I just wish Sony would stop treating their loyal fanbase like a bunch of dumbass children. Its disgusting.
No, I’m not saying for a moment that ND are stupid per se – in fact I’ve explicitly said the opposite quite a few times. In this case for ‘stupidity’ read ‘accident’.
Or, of course, we could always invoke Cole’s Law.
just two questions sam:
1: already know about EU getting the demo, but what about japan?
2: is the game going to be region locked? if so that is just stupid, but how will it be localized ( will you dub it or will you just slap on sub-titles)? Or is all this trouble because its going to be like RFOM? do you know that it reads the language setting of your PS3 and changes accordingly (ie: if you have a US ps3 but your language setting is japanese, the game changes to japanese), so it doesn’t matter what region you buy it in? That is some good usage of Blu-ray. I think all games should do this.
And as a side note. If Sony want to have the PS3 networked as a global audience, a community of PS3 gamers then for gods sake start treating them like one? I just don’t get this stupid elitist attitude?
@furransu
lol nah.
if it’s a western game in generally gets released simultaneously on xbox live though. only a couple of things are different from region to region and it’s generally the japenese xbox live you find this. i only ever use my european account most of the time for, as i said before.
it’s a pity sony don’t do the same thing.
Can someone from america confirm the release date for UDF?. I have pre-ordered and pre-paid for my copy from the states, and hope to receive it before stupid dog grace us with the same demo u already have. And what chance of the street date being broken, i’d get it even sooner.
@iapetus
Cool. Didn’t mean to put words in your mouth, was just lookin’ for clarification. I tend to be a bit of a ND fan and a bit defensive of them, so…;)
@Grover
You seem to pretend like you know a lot about QA, but you obviously know nothing.
First, the demo was only finished a week or so ago as was mentioned in a previous Uncharted blog, not “a number of weeks ago”.
Second, I feel like I should start macro’ing this text, but explain to me why SCE”A” would test on SCE”E” consoles?
Third, catering to different territories based upon upon cultural differences is not the same thing as having a “stupid elitist attitude”. I like my content localized, even if it takes some time and I have to wait a bit.
Go back to your bridge – I think I see some billy goats makin’ their way to you…
i think Sam cant get up from his bed.. i think he is a typical fat guy lol
lol okay i think this is going to be my last point i make on this.
http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2007/11/08/demo-two-worlds.aspx
the latest demo on xbox live. notice it says “all xbox live regions”
sony take notes. ;)
leadbelly: The one thing that link definitely shows is that Microsoft fans and Sony fans aren’t that different after all – it’s full of nothing but complaints. :P
lol
that’s because it’s a really crap game. i won both consoles, but one thing i have to hand microsoft for, is they have done a good job with xbox live.
there are a couple of demos and other content that differs, it’s usually something really region specific though like “america’s army”. most of the big releases get released in all regions or at least in US and europe simultaneously.
@for all the late comers (anyone who did not post in the top 20). I live in the UK and work until 2300 local time. Every thurs as soon as i get home i switch on my ps3 which by default immediately signs me into my US account (cos it has all the best content) which i belive goes on-line around the same time in US est time zone. This would have been around 2320. First thing i did was start D/L ing Drakes. It was fairly quick and installed and ready to play @ 0020. After 3 attempts i knew it was not gonna work & immediately logged on to this site to find out what the hell was going on. I found sam blog posting and i was shocked when i read the words that “region locked” in sam’s quote’s, he even stated all demo’s were Locked to their particular store. I posted number FOUR as a comment so it was damm soon after sam’s original post. If you read #3 post it confirm’s that sam confirmed the demo was “locked” earlier than me, so does post #5.#6#7#8#9 & #10 and so on. sam realising the sh*ts gonna hit the fan repost’s @ # 39. And that is where the “region lock” qoutes are removed. By post #48 “iapetus” ask’s me “where does it say “region lock”?. i explain where i saw it and go to check and the thing has been changed. anyone who posted in the top #30 can confirm this. READ THE POST NUMBERS I HAVE MENTIONED. i do not lie.
I love how people jump on conspiracy theories rather than accepting the possibility that maybe, just MAYBE, Sam made a mistake and it got corrected.
If he said it was region locked, and it wasn’t, what do you expect to be done? To keep it up there when it’s erroneous?