Last month Australian retailer EB Games confirmed Fast & Furious: Showdown would be coming to Wii U.
However, it has now emerged that Australia will ironically not be getting the game, as Activision has confirmed it won't be made available Down Under.
This represents the fourth Activision Wii U title that will never see the light of day in Australia. The other three are 007 Legends, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct and The Amazing Spider-Man Ultimate Edition.
Fast & Furious: Showdown will release alongside the upcoming movie and will be available from 21st and 24th May in North America and Europe respectively. Australian gamers will sadly have to go without - short of importing it.
It's unfortunately reached the point now where news on Activision titles actually making the trip Down Under is more shocking. Hopefully the situation will improve so Australian gamers can enjoy the same games other PAL regions do.
What are your thoughts on this, Australia? Are you disappointed to be missing out on this one? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source vooks.net]
Comments 24
It seems Australia doesn't get the so-so Activision games.
Is this for Wii U only or everything?
@Ravyu It's on all consoles (Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3) and PC
ya know this isn't really news . We don't get a lot of stuff. There's like... 50? games on the UK eShop thats not on the AU eShop. Oh well, it's not like I care.
Only one I might import is Amazing Spiderman. I would have bought Walking Dead if it weren't so terrible.
Seems pretty screwed up, is just Activision games that don't make it to Australia?
Surley even if Activision didn't want to retail launch a game it would be cheap/easy enough to put games on eStore at the very least.
Sounds more like a lack of confidence in there game. Look at the other games they didn't bring out in Australia they were basically flops. I love the fast and furious series but the game will probably suck (I hope I'm wrong) so Australia is missing nothing
@domdom87 : It's supposed to. Titles are usually released simultaneously across the EU/AU/NZ stores, but occasionally, we'll be waiting for months upon months should a game be delayed (we're still waiting for Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition to be released, for instance).
We also miss out on a LOT of games due to our smaller market, both in retail and the eShops. Most DSiWare games don't make it here (to think that Shantae of all games wasn't released in Australia), and we've also missed out on quite a number of downloadable 3DS titles, which bums me out as retail 3DS offerings are quite sparse these days.
It's probably because for a given population, there's a percentage of people who will always buy crap games, whether they are completionist collectors of a series, or people who simply don't know any better - look at the high percentage of dross that came out for the PS2 and Wii which (interestingly) seemed to sell by the bucket-load from places like Kmart and Target.
This would make it worth while in places like Europe and the US but that same percentage in Australia (population is about that of New York State) just wouldn't cover the costs of the various middle-men for the 3000 or so copies they might sell.
Also because they have to get yet another rating (which are expensive).
It's weird how Australians don't get alot of game releases, whats up with that? Really strict laws or something?
This game better not be good..lol. So far I haven't really cared about the other 3 unreleased games!
The word "fourth" is misspelled in the 3rd paragraph. Tsk Tsk.
It'll probably end up being a POS cash-in just like Survival Instinct was.
I find this kind of weird. Is something going between Activison and Nintendo of Australia? Are they sparing them from shovelware?
From the other releases that never made it here it looks as though they know its not a good game.
This is why I will never live in Australia, they miss out on too many games..
One could always just get this from Gametraders.
"but please, don't forget to purchase COD: The VIAGRA Missions." lol
@hydeks read the 2nd paragraph of #10 - it's that first, then it's because our ratings board is most likely under-staffed.
I'll pull out may favourite soap-box again - there needs to be a unified list of ratings checks that would only need to be applied once and done in one place - a sort of United Nations games rating system. The ratings gauntlet is run once and the game can be released globally simultaneously instead of putting with the costly, repetitious, staggered crap systems we have now.
Games companies for their part should be presenting in the design submission "no-blood", "no swearing", "fixed-response text comms", etc, "parental" options, then provide assurance to relevant countries where this level of censoring (even for adults) is law the mechanism for hard-coding the options into a particular region's release (or the hard-coded toned-down version of the game could be bought anywhere by parents concerned about their kids being unable to separate play from reality).
Game publishers should be working smarter and collectively with governments and not accept the current ratings grind as being cast in stone. Unfortunately the only thing they seem to want to be smart about is making "funny-money"... after all, once the ratings are unified, it's only 'business decisions' that'll stop a game being distributed at the bricks & mortar store level.
Well there's always that thing called the internetz... I hear people buy stuff on it these days
@sillygostly It's ludicrous. The new BitTrip on WiiU is also on our list of M.I.A. Games. I have my wallet ready for Mighty Switch Force and BitTrip but I feel like I'm waiting in vain.
Change the region to Europe then download away till your hearts content
can't say i'm too inetrested. Unless it truly turns out brilliant
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