YenRug

Had an e-mail, this morning, from Choices UK:

A Nintendo rep has stated that, whilst there is a software element required (i.e. the Sonic Solutions player), that is not all there is and a simple download is not possible to enable DVD playback.

If you've got HDTV get Component, plain and simple; if you plan to take the system to friends or use it on a variety of sets, best bet would be SCART.

If the €~£ exchange rate was favourable, is there anything stopping you from buying one from the UK? As far as I know, as long as tax is paid in one EU country, then you cannot be charged duty when delivered to another EU country.

Good grief! 443 unread e-mails???

Uh-uh, that won't work, the video signal in a Composite cable is only carried in a single bundle of wires, meanwhile an RGB cable it is carried in three bundles.

Whilst I am a big importer, myself, I do understand why regions exist; admittedly, I wish Nintendo would give developers/publishers the option to release games without region checks. There are two main reasons for continued inclusion of region locks: 1. A developer can "sell" a game to several publishers, especially so if a particular publisher only works in one geographical region. It helps with deal-making if a developer can show to a publisher, in one region, that they're not going to end up selling against copies freely imported from another region. The problem comes when a developer doesn't make the effort to find a publisher in a region, or is simply unable to find one if they do make the effort. 2. Content in games, i.e. third party music tracks, special appearances of celebrities, etc, might possibly be only available for licensing in one particular geographical region, or it might be that their appeal is extremely limited in another region. This is very common in the case of music tracks, where different regions will have different track listings.

Check out Amazon, they're selling the Wii Component and RGB SCART cables for £14.99 each, whereas I've seen them listed as high as £24.99 at other sites.

OK, for those still wanting to know the genuine reason: US sales figures run from Sunday to Saturday. What does this mean? The PS3 comes out on Friday, the 17th, which means that all of the PS3 sell-out figures will be for this week; meanwhile, the Wii launches on Sunday and will, it's seeming quite likely, sell out on next week's sales figures. In some ways, though, this will actually look better, because next week is Thanksgiving week and they will be able to emphasise that in any press releases.

If I could be bothered to search, I posted my description of something similar a few months back, it's also similar to what Mark Bozon suggested, in his blog over on IGN, on Friday.

Ah, that's just a Composite > SCART adaptor, you still only have the Composite cable signal even though it's going into the SCART socket. In a proper RGB SCART cable the video signal is split into into three separate ones, one Red, one Green and one Blue; this means you have got a much greater bandwidth to send the signal through, meaning less signal degradation.

Nope, not by a long way; Composite is amongst the worst for picture quality. Unless you're getting Composite confused with Component.

Strangely enough, Composite is pretty much the worst option for picture output, anyway, so why he's making a point about it seems suspect. As to not liking Zelda, everyone's entitled to their own opinion about games. Okay, after starting to read the blog entry, for starters he's wrong about the component cables, Nintendo have confirmed that they will be available in stores at launch. He doesn't mention whether he actually played Zelda, or just watched; to be honest, it's more likely the latter and watching games is very rarely anywhere near as good as actually playing them.

Tax in the UK is 17.5%, so that's only a 7.5% difference in tax rates. However, let's work that out, see if there's any mark-up beyond that happening: GB£179 - 17.5%VAT = GB£152.34 + 25%TAX = GB£190.43 Seems like someone is marking up the price, somewhere, from what the base price should be. If I were you, I'd definitely complain.

Any of you wondered, where you're placing masses of pre-orders everywhere you can, you might be the reason why there's talk of a shortage of systems at launch?