germany posts

It's not exactly a shock to hear but Germany's gamers won't be getting the same version of Call of Duty Black Ops as the rest of the world is getting to play. According to German-based site PCGames.de the normal version of the game has been banned for sale in that country.

So what, some of you may ask? All a German gamer has to do is to buy the Treyarch-developed game from another country to get the full effect, right? Nope. Because the PC versions uses Steam for both the digital download and retail versions of the game and in Germany Steam will only approve of that country's local version of the game, not the one from the rest of the world.

Sometimes you have to know when to hold them and also know when to fold them (we read that somewhere). In this case the folding goes over to Sega who confirmed to our sister site Joystiq that they don't plan to sell their upcoming first person shooter Aliens Vs Predator in Germany.

According to Sega, the Rebellion-developed game would have to have its expected violent content edited to be sold in the always strict country but in the end they decided not to bother, saying such changes "would harm the gameplay experience." And what about Australia, which also has a tendency to ban games with very violent themes? Sega says that so far there's no word from that country's ratings board. Aliens Vs Predator will likely get an "M" rating from the US-based ESRB when it's released sometime in the first quarter of 2010.

Germany is still one of the biggest territories to sell PC games but according to what GamePolitics is reporting the country's government may be moving to ban both the selling and the production of games with violent content. According to a number of German language news reports, all 16 of Germany's Interior Ministers have asked the country's main legislative body the Bundestag to vote to ban such games.

The story states that the move may have been prompted by a local school shooting on March 11 where a 17 year old boy killed 15 people before killing himself. News reports have linked the boy to playing games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2 before the shooting took place. Germany already bans a number of games with violent content from being sold in stores. However if this move was to take place it could force local game developers like Crytek to move their development out of the country.

According to EDGE Online, Mythic Entertainment's recently released MMO has taken Europe by storm. Nabbing top spots in Germany and Sweden with a second place finish in Spain, Warhammer Online is building up quite a stable of characters in the fight of Order versus Destruction. Other notable PC sellers, in the very PC-loving region of the world, included appearances by Spore, Crysis Warhead, an obligatory Sims expansion and the Warhammer Online: Collector's Edition. Germany sales chart listed below, Sweden and Spain are available after the jump.

Germany (figures provided by MC-GfK)

1. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC)
2. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Collector's Edition (PC)
5. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (360)
6. Spore (PC)
7. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii)
8. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
9. Wii Fit (Wii)
10. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS2)

In the US, when a game is released for the PC and Xbox 360 at the same time (BioShock is a good example), the Xbox 360 version always outsells the PC version by a huge margin. But that's not the case in Germany, according to a rep from Microsoft Games Studios Europe. In an article at Gamesindustry.biz Peter Zetterberg, business development manager for MGS Europe, says releasing an Xbox 360 game alongside an PC port doesn't work in Germany

According to Zetterberg, "If we launch a game that is on 360 and PC simultaneously, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing the German market to choose to play the PC version – because they are more likely to buy that than spend their money on the Xbox 360. If we launched a Halo game on PC and 360 in Germany simultaneously, 80 per cent of sales would be on the PC."

Wow. 80 percent? That's almost hard to believe. Clearly there's no such issue like piracy or hardware issues in Germany like there is in North America in terms of selling PC games. Zetterberg also states Microsoft is looking into developing smaller and more independent PC games as well as titles that have some kind of social networking features, " . . . not an MMO but a social network, where you play games, you meet, and interact – that's definitely something we're looking at."

Ubisoft deployed a German press release announcing that it will be the distributor of Bethesda's ultra-anticipated RPG Fallout 3 in several European countries. Those countries include: France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Fallout is one of gaming's most prestigious intellectual properties, and this iteration is under development by the people behind the wildly successful The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Ubisoft has probably struck gold with this deal. With a new studio, new internal IPs, old stand-bys, and massive deployment over Steam, this is shaping up to be an exciting stretch for Ubisoft.

[Via No Mutants Allowed]