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.
Sony did screw up the in-game XMB and now this.
Either they are intoxicated or just plain morons.
Doing things like that drives people away from ps3 even further.
They need to get their act together, especially when it comes to content being provided 2 weeks after the xbox realese (Skate, on top of my mind)
or the utter lack of decent(!!!) exclusive Titles.
GLOBAL PLAYSTATION STORE!!!!!!
Globox82: Yes. It’s clear this was a giant conspiracy by Sony to deliberately ensure that this demo and this demo alone would be region locked. It’s their attempt to fight against their own decision to make games region free. The thing is, they knew that the Illuminati would complain about this, as they all imported their consoles from Europe, so to maintain plausible deniability they made it *look* like a bug.
I’m glad at least one person sees the truth – clearly your PS3 has malfunctioned and is not sending out the mind control rays that have affected everyone else. In order to preserve your safety, you might want to consider a thought screen helmet from http://www.stopabductions.com/ in case Sony’s evil ninjas break into your house at night and repair the mind control unit.
This has to be one of the funniest comments section by far. There should be awards for some of the stuff people come out with, classic. I had the demo downloading overnight only to discover this morning the news. Would have been nice to know before hand, but hey, its not ‘our’ store. But to cancel a pre-order or sell the PS3 for this. Absoultley brilliant.
Ironically, these Europeans are the same ones complaining that they aren’t getting anything on their store. You seem to be getting our content anyway, but you feel you have to complain about it on principle?
So Rumble hits Japan First ………..I had better sell my PS3 .
Jeigh, we get your FREE content, paying content like games, add on packs and such we cannot get. We still havent got everyday shooter, cash guns chaos, well, pretty much everything you have.
We want the demonstration later tomorrow or we will not go to buy the Uncharted!
I’m from Europe and we are very disappointed with Sony and Naughty Dog. One more time, Sony was forgotten the European PlayStation gamer community.
Please, read this and make European gamers happy!
I think this whole thing is way overblown BUT I wont be buying a playstation pruduct quite so quickly next time and I think thats where the real damage is being done. Im luck enough to have the OTHER system as well so all thes screwing up by SONY is not so painful but everyone has to admit they are making a real mess of it.
Do not take this Path sony..
It would be seriously stupid to block ppl from Demos from other continent. Since it has been done with PC:s for decade already. There are contryes like Finland for example where I live that think Vocalising and translations are only extra. We have played english games for as long as there has been gaming and we dislike the fact that we have to wait for Demos and games because they happen to be needed to translate to french, germany etc etc.
We use all the stores to mainly dowload demos and trailers about movies and games. You can region block all the Psn games that can be bought with money and I would understand it. But blocking ppl from getting access to commersial content is plain stupid from marketting perspective.
I sure hope this is a bug, that eather gets fixed or fastens the relase of europe/asian stores.
Having multiple playstation stores in the first place isnt really customer friendly choise eather.
I want to try the game, watch the trailers when they are relased and not to wait because of some translations. Is that too much to ask?
Region free gaming means Demos too, remember that.
Sorry for all the people overseas that cannot play the US demo of Uncharted, but man, this demo is amazing. Haven’t played many games lately that kick my butt, but this one did, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Played it with one of my friends and we switched off every time one of us died, both of us were having a blast.
A lot of people cry about the update. The update was fine sure not what people hoped for especially not the ones who are used to being treated like kings.
And about the demo? I know it’s just a demo but that’s not the point the demo is something like what we call the last straw. People in the EU/AU have a lot of reasons to be pissed off for years. We get treated as if were a children not to be trusted and no good for anything. A few companies like Konami and Squaresoft got this message loud and clear and tried to give us exactly what we’ve been crying for for years.
And the people saying it costs time to add all the different languages to the games. WTF is that all about 99% of my games are all in English and I live in a country where they speak 3 different languages German French and Flemish (some older form of Dutch). In fact I have 2 games that aren’t in English and that is NFS most wanted and Burnout revenge. I cursed and sweared at it cause the translations are rather poor,I haven’t played those 2 for longer than an hour.
I really wonder if there would be this out cry if sony ACTUALLY had a decent games line up and lots of stuff on the store…..im guessing not. This out cry just goes to prove how inadequate the PS3 really is, shame.
256: No, you’re right. How silly of me. Of course this is a mistake. They simply had no PS3’s around that emulated the 60%+ of the consoles not sold in America. Development studio’s are unlikely to have a non-American PS3, of course. What was i thinking?
No, no, this wasn’t a ‘decision’ (on a finished product, with a well polished demo), but a horrible accidental ‘mistake’ Naughty Dog themselves are shattered by and amending asap – as soon as they could get a hold of a non-American PS3.
Now, hopefully those damn marketing departments will get in sync and stop making – and then retracting – comments about region locking. About marketing and regionisation decisions for non-American specific demo’s. Will stop pushing this 22nd November non-US date for the non-US demo. This, after all, is the non-US demo, it’s just this god-awful accidental ‘bug’ we’ve got to get rid of. (Developers screaming in the background: “Somebody find a non-North American PS3, for gods sake! We’ve got to have one somewhere, this is a development studio!” Dr Strangelove like.)
There’s tin foil hat stuff going on here, friend, but it’s not on account of those failing to put two and two together. To say Naughty Dog didn’t ‘know’ this wouldn’t work on the consoles of 60% of users not within the designated preferential zone beggars belief.
Uncharted will support rumble. The DulaShock3 wont be out in the US until way after the game is released…. how many US gamers are going to import a DualShock3?
I’m pretty sure there are US owners that ALREADY complained that they had to wait… and are just going to get it from the region that offers it, the day it is released.
Now lets just imagine that you discover it won’t work with a US console…
How completely RIDICULOUS. I’ve heard the UK version won’t be released for another 2 weeks either. Hello Sony, anyone home?? Are you forgetting your other users around the world?
I have an Asian (Hong Kong) PS3 — the asian store sucks dilly ass so basically everyone in the SE Asia region has the US store set as default — so imagine my surprise when the game hung on me when loading — imagine that — doesn’t SE Asia and the US share the same DAMN regional coding anyway?
Uncharted was hotly anticipated — now you’re just pissing everyone off. Release a demo thats compatible with all PS3s — its completely retarded that different regions will have different demos. And please, SONY or Naughty Dog or whoever was in charge of this mess up — grow a brain; and put yourself in our shoes for once — its frustrating to say the least; and you’re pushing mightily towards your last straws.
I download the demo yesterday and it was good. I give it a 9.0 out of 10. the graphic were good. The only think that I didn’t really like was the way you aim the pistol, that you have to push L1 to aim and R1 to shoot if not you will be missing every single bullet. Other than that the game looks good and I will be waiting for the fool version to play it. About the download giving problems, I didn’t notice, I got home saw the download put it to download and checked 2 hours after and it was done. later
@237
There are no words in the English language to describe how much of a [DELETED] you are. Trading in your Playstation 3 (future-proof console) to get an Xbox 360 (console with limited lifespan), because a demo that was released on the AMERICAN PLAYSTATION STORE didn’t work on your NON-AMERICAN PS3? Look people, I’m an Australian, and when I downloaded the demo and found that it didn’t work on my console, I was disappointed too, like many of my fellow EU PS3 owners seem to be. But it really isn’t the end of the world. We will get a demo in a couple of weeks, and then nobody will be complaining. And I’m pretty sure that this will be a one-off incident, or at least something that doesn’t happen very often, so I wouldn’t sweat on future demo releases or future game releases. There is no way in hell Sony are stupid enough to introduce region-coding to games for no reason, it would cost them money, and much of their userbase. If they HAD of done that, I would have ALMOST accepted post 237 as a mutated form of a good idea, but [DELETED]. I know Sony aren’t the brightest bunch in the world, but come on, they’re not THAT stupid. This is a one-off, I’m pretty certain of that. Anyway people, I just urge you… I absolutely, desperately urge you… to not do ANYTHING like Mr. 237 did. It is absolutely retarded, and beyond all logic and comprehension, that you would sell your console because of a foreign demo not working on it (It’s even more retarded because now he’s assured himself that he will NEVER play the game, not just the demo). I was reading through all of these comments, and basically, every single one at least had some form of logic/point… until I got to post 237. Globox82, I’m sorry dude, but you are a [DELETED] moron.
A few people were asking how region locking compares to the 360. This is not unusual and is usually up to the publishers based on their legal agreements with various territories.
This one is a bit unusual though since Sony is publishing the game, so you would think they secured the rights for all territories already (and ratings, etc.). Third party demos on the 360 are often region locked.
My biggest gripe is the overall lack of demos, lethargic download speeds and installation process for demos.
I guess the most surprising thing I’ve noticed is how many users on this blog are from Europe. I guess Sony is still very popular in Europe as compared to their diminished role in the US!
Um, why is navigation on this blog so retarded? I posted a comment regarding #237’s moronic idea of selling his ps3 for a 360, but it doesn’t appear to have gone through. Why is this?
Well that one went through. Maybe it’s because I swore in my last one, I don’t know. Anyway, the point I initially made in my first response, was that #237 is an absolute moron. Why on earth would you trade your ps3 for a 360 because of a foreign demo not working on your system? I’m Australian, and I was disappointed that the Uncharted demo didn’t work, trust me. But are you that utterly dense, Mr. 237? I don’t often flame people, but damn, I feel almost obligated to point out this retard for what he/she really is. It’s nothing against the 360, but anyone who observes this industry from a logical perspective, can see that the ps3 is the future-based console. To get rid of such potential for the quick fix, has-everything-now-but-won’t-last 360 is so stupid. If they had of started region locking games from now on, I’d ALMOST understand. But it’s ONE BLOODY DEMO. What is wrong with you? Are you THAT impatient?
@271
The Sony brand is much stronger in the EU than Xbox… which is where most of the problem lies. Why should Europe be so loyal to a company that treats them like an afterthought. Sony is seriously running out of goodwill in these territories.
Oh by the way Mr. 237, you won’t EVER play Uncharted now. Someone’s a clever cookie, eh? ;]
GREAT DEMO, day 1 buy for sure…..keep up the great work Naughty Dog!!
So, where is the update you promised us Sam?
@273
I’m Aussie also and while not freaking out about this demo I am concerned. For a ‘future based’ console there is some serious backwards thinking. Being able to download Warhawk, but then only having ONE user being able to play it, is another concern.
Digital Distribution shouldn’t be so intentionally crippled. If this is what Sony is intending for the future, locked in segregated play experiences with little online support of basic concepts like IM than they are really out of touch with the modern gamer.
AWESOME DEMO!!!!! This is the type of games I wished for WOW!!!
Day 1 purchase….
Forgetting the idiocy of #237 for a moment… I have to admit, I’m not really impressed with Sony either on this, but not because of the actual demo not working. I’m disappointed because they really should have warned people that it was a US-only demo; it’s just common sense that EU PS3 owners come onto the US store and download demos. Sony are well aware of this, and they even seem to condone it without condoning it (which may not make much sense, but you know, knowing the fact that EU PS3 owners can access the US store, it may well explain why the EU store is so bare). But on this occasion, they’ve forgotten that logic, and a US-only compatible demo has been released.
However, at the end of the day, on November 22nd, nobody’s going to care about this, because we’ll all have the demo then. So, in my honest opinion, all this arguing and Sony/Naughty Dog bashing is pretty pointless. They (Naughty Dog) are making an awesome game for us, but some of us are getting the demo a bit late (for once. this doesn’t happen often). Instead of complaining about this, go out and buy some games for your PS3 to occupy yourself until the demo comes out, and help keep Sony strong in European markets. In exchange, I’m sure they’ll try and make sure this kind of this is a rarity (if it ever does happen again at all). We’ll have the demo in a couple of weeks, so don’t sweat it.
Yes some people’s reaction are over the top. But I think the generall message is valid and important, people get angry about being divided by country lines-
SONY: Make the PSN store global, this [DELETED] of region-coding has to stop. Region-Coded games cost you sales, region-coded DVDs have been the possibly most repulsive practice, that you didn’t stop it for BluRay was stupid and now this. It makes people angry if the neighbour gets something and you don’t because they can clearly see that its no technical issue but simply malice or contractual problems. Its worse for your image than making bad decisions for all customers. You are a global company, you have global customers, stop the division by region.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fhHVyIBpNhc
UK review of the DEMO
@278
Correct me on this if I’m wrong, but isn’t the download half-price, compared to buying the game proper? That may explain why you can only have 1 user if you download it, but I don’t know, I can’t honestly say that I’ve played either version (retail or download) before.
Also, like I said in one of my earlier posts, I really don’t think this is something that will happen often. I think it’s just a one-off blunder, or a miscommunication. When I downloaded the Uncharted demo, I also downloaded the College Hoops 2K8 demo. Guess what? It worked perfectly. They’ve had a stuff up this time, but I think after the backlash we’ve had here, they’ll be a little more careful about it next time. That’s just my opinion though.
Just forget about the demo, it will take ages to be available for Asia. Can anyone clarify will the final game be region lock?
“go out and buy some games for your PS3 to occupy yourself until the demo comes out,”
You comedian. Which games? I bought Heavenly Sword. Ratchet and CoD4 are not yet available in Europe (Or has been from today but only from uk distributors not in retail). The rest is pretty much crap and you cannot buy anything worthwhile from the EU store because the last game addition has been Pixel Racer *Wooohooo*. I hope in 6 months this really bad time will be forgotten but they should be kissing our feet for buying their console without many games and should try to make as much content available as possible instead of intentionally prohibiting us to get it. SCEE should be hanged.
Very disappointed. Sounds more of an excuse than a bug. If it is a bug then fix it, or bring a version to our store pretty damn soon! I wonder if we’ll strangely see lots of these bugs appear in all demos release on the us store?
You can thank the French for this bs.
In the UK we used to get US games adn the eu countries bought either direct from the States or From the UK.
However, suddenly the French demanded that all games coming in the EU were ‘multi’ and not just that but UK shops should be prohibited from their monopoly of selling to the EU.
I have never once met a european who wants games in their language, they would FAR prefer it early in english that very late in 24 other languages.
Sony: You really screwed up at a time when you can ill-afford screw-ups of ANY flavour.
tb
@284
You do make a point about there being a lack in games, yes. But with that said, there ARE still some pretty decent titles out there at the moment. Mind you, I only got my PS3 recently, and I only have 3 games for it right now, so perhaps that’s why I feel there is some depth. I own Resistance, MotorStorm and FIFA 08, so when I go to the store, I have plenty of options to spend my money on, that I don’t already have. Maybe you already have a stack of games though, and are in that position of having to wait for more games to come. But that begs the question: If indeed you do have a fair amount of games, what’s wrong with spending a bit more time on them for a couple more weeks? It wouldn’t kill you, would it?
As for the EU PSN store titles, I agree. There really is basically nothing for us to buy, which is a shame. I hope they bring in some good online titles soon. :(
280: I agree that’s the right attitude at the end of the day. I do think it’s good all this was aired, though. There are too many imbalances between the way these various (these days, largely artificial) ‘regions’ are treated – whether it be price, dates, or in this case region locking on demo’s (which, who knows, may well have been the first of many, without receiving the expression of disapproval that it got.)
I think most people in lesser areas/circumstances expected this Internet thing to ‘expand’ their range – to remove barriers of population, distance etc, so that people would be somewhat ‘equal’, for once, at least in this, the digital realm. Locking that effect in with region free games – which negate the delay’s and price gouging in some smaller distrubtion areas – was a ray of hope for a lot of people this gen.
This is largely the case, but only in a kind of back door way atm, via online import stores and fake logons to US servers – which this demo shows the potential trouble with. We’ve only got it on a very vicarious trust atm. Which, in this case, ‘might’ have been breached.
But hopefully all this will get some universiallity between the stores in future. The message couldn’t be clearer – or angrier. See what happens. At least it might prevent this sort of thing becoming common if there was even a ‘sniff’ of that suggestion within Sony headquarters.
@277: Yes, Sam. It’s 7:54am – how dare you not have got a response out of ND, forced them to patch the demo and had it uploaded for me to download? I didn’t have breakfast this morning, so I don’t see why *you* should be allowed to.
Seriously, people. Wait. You’re not going to see a response before this afternoon US time at the earliest. Honestly, some of this garbage makes me ashamed to be European at times…
let’s face fact naughty dog don’t care bout the european community . u mean after all these comments they ain’t even putting out the demo till two weeks time that’s way more than a slap to the face that’s like slappin ere one in ur family. all i can say to y’all is if u can hold out don’t buy the game let them see if they can make a profit from just the northern americans but if you can’t well good luck just expect to get like an a** whooping next time not just a slap.good luck
@288
Yeah, you make some good points there. I have to admit, I get pretty annoyed sometimes when the US get things above us (I was irate when Final Fantasy XII got released in North America over 6 months before we got it), but when I see people like #237 saying/doing stupid things like completely giving up on a brand because of a demo, it really puts things in perspective for me.
It’d be like if I gave up playing FF games because of that shoddy EU release of FFXII. Of course I wouldn’t do that, because I enjoy FF games. And the same type of thing can be said of Sony, I enjoy their products and services. By no means, am I saying that they have been perfect, or even close to perfect, with some of their strategies, but those of us who chose the Playstation 3, all chose to buy the product because we had/have faith that the product would and will deliver a quality experience. Yes, there is a lack of games (at the moment). Yes, there’s no in-game xmb (yet), and yes, a region-locked demo of Uncharted was released, and EU gamers can’t play said demo (yet).
But as I’ve pointed out for each of those three problems, there’s always a side-note of “yet”. And imho, this is because that’s all these things are. Yets. In time, we will have awesome games for our console, we will have in-game xmb, and we WILL have an Uncharted demo in a fortnight’s time. It’s all just a matter of time.
(sorry for that being so long, as well >_>)
Stop being cry babies it’s just a bug not a region lock you liars. If you wanna complain cry to your regional gov for not using US $, lol.
I’m from Brasil and sony didn’t even launched PS3 here. So the easiest way to import was to get an PS3 from JAP. As it WAS region free I didn’t mind at all.
Now I’m thinking to sell my ps3 and really not to buy another one.
Guess this will be the first os a series.
Sony should make their costumers happy by other ways since they don’t have good games to make people buy the console.
Sony is loosing this because of the ps2 god feeling. They think they can dictate rules and everyone will accept them. Well, nex gen console war is all about making costumers happy and Sony isn’t making that.
Even Microsoft with their 30% failure rate is making better than sony.
Also they need to help developers. A nice dev kit far from a decent one was only available almost 6 months after the console release. Is this some kind of joke? As far as I know the dev support at sony is pretty junky.
If they see a port like PES 2008 running crappy they should reach the developers and help them.
Well who am I to tell Sony what to do. Loosing my time here.
Anybody wanna buy my 60GB JAP PS3 witha copy of Casino Royale?
#292: The WORST cry babies are actually americans when a game gets released in PAL regions before the NTSC areas, you should hear them boo.
Same for tv, when BattleStar Galactica was first broadcast 6 months earlier in the UK our ‘cousins’ wept like little girls.
Ok, but please make sure this bug is not in the final US-Version of the Game.
Cause I want to buy it in the USA and it would just suck to find out at home, that the game does not work on a PAL-PS3 :/
And one Hint to Sony/Developers:
Please check your Demos on a PAL/JP PS3, too. (and that a Demo does not try to load a Language or PAL-Files it does not have, just cause the PS3-Settings say so)
I know it is the US-Store and it is officially forbidden etc etc., but some Demos are just not available to other regions.
Other Demos with this kind of bug:
– Def Jam Demo -> just crashes on PAL-PS3s and there is no Demo in the PAL-Stores.
– US-Demo of F1: Freezes during Loading, if PS3 is not set to english
– 2. JP-Demo of Heavenly Sword: Freezes if PS3 is not set to english/japanese
(sry for my english)
“there ARE still some pretty decent titles out there at the moment.”
Resistance/Motorstorm? Yes Resistance is nice but OLD. I hate sports titles and think Racers are boring. So what do we have:
Resistance: 1 year old (but it was cool)
Heavenly Sword: nice, really beautiful but short
Lair, Conan: Crap ( although Conan seems to be fun in a really trashy sort of way but not 60E fun)
Jericho, Darkness, Ninja Gaiden: demos bored me to death.
This will be better radically in the next months when Assassin’s, CoD4, Ratchet, Uncharted, Haze, UT3 … hit, but at the moment the game selection is atrocious. And no I do not have a fair selection of games because the system has not had a fair selection of games that have been worth 60E.
And I won’t pay 60E for a game I do not think is great, sorry, if they want me to buy crap like Conan they have to price it accordingly.
yes I knew that before I made the choice for the PS3 and in the next months it will most likely be forgotten but it is still highly annoying. And if in this situation they either willingly or unwillingly [DELETED] up like that people get angry. I think this is understandable. Not rational because its only a demo but understandable.
Besides I think this backslash as irrational as it may be is a good thing, since it sends a clear message about what people think of this festering cyst on the butt of the entertainment industry that is region-coding in general. I still hate the fact that I cannot buy a DVD when making a vacation in the states and that my sister who is in asia cannot exchange PS2 games with me. It is so incredible annoying because it doesn’t make any sense. I want to give them money and they try to prohibit me from it? What gives?
Probably what not a lot of US gamers understand is that in Europe there is a quite large following of Playstation, perhaps a little more so than in the US which seems to be more XBOX 360 then PS3
The annoying thing in Europe is that we never get any sort of direct feedback from SCEE, we have a community forum that has little to no feedback and Three Speech which is a semi-offical webblog, aside from that we get nothing like what you have with this site.
This lack of communication is highlighted more with the content of the EU store which is quite sadly poor compared to what the US have. We often get demos, games, trailers weeks or months after they appear on the US store and in some cases they don’t appear at all.
Did you know that Lair was only just release this week, along with Ratchet and Clank and COD4?
For most of us the US store is now the default place to download demos as waiting weeks on end to try something out is quite poor management, its just disappointing that we should have to wait to enjoy what our US friends are especially for a high anticipated game.
I hope that what has happend in the last few hours may shake some heads in SCEA and SCEE and work towards getting demos and updates released globally at the same time and everyone would be happy.
[…] Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Demo Update Escrito a las 17:54 | Envia esta nota por correo electrónico Por Paola Mejia | Lee más de: […]
http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/834/834071p1.html
You have to be kidding me, I not going to download another 1.2gb demo when I have it already on my PS3, Please do the right thing and release patch to allow the demo to work on all regions, else I suspect a lot of very angry people.
DUAL-SHOCK 3 I’m pretty sure there are US owners that ALREADY complained that they had to wait… and are just going to get it from the region that offers it, the day it is released.
Now lets just imagine that you discover it won’t work with a US console…
this is the same as this demo
well put Mr Fusion
and if everyone in EUROPE trade in there PS3 for a 360 how many DEVELOPERS will stay with PS3??? my guess is that the PS3 would go DREAMCAST GOLD
Consecuencues!!!
The viewest spanish tech website (in fact the spanish version of slashdot) is already commenting that users and websites are showing Naughty Dog like a racist company.
http://ocio.barrapunto.com/ocio/07/11/09/1251210.shtml
Fix this situation now or assume more consecuences, this could reach the TV media.