release of simcity

[pritam 0]

Maxis team already announce that the SimCity will be available for purchase for PC on March 5th, 2013. Will simcity release on 5th march worldwide?Is it available for purchasing on 5th march from any country's retail stores?Please confirm me........

[Xenocity 343]

PC version releases:

March 5th for NA

March 7th for JP

March 7th for AUS

March 7th for parts of EU

March 8th for the rest of EU

The Mac version is due out sometime in Spring.

[pritam 0]

I am hardcore fan of simcity from India. When I will purchase this game from retail store?When simcity will release in India (asian country)? Please please reply me. I can't wait for this game.

[simcity4deluxe 95]

It'll probably be about the same time as Japan's release date.

[Xenocity 343]

I am hardcore fan of simcity from India. When I will purchase this game from retail store?When simcity will release in India (asian country)? Please please reply me. I can't wait for this game.

I don't know.

You can order it from Amazon's indian site.

You should be able to digitally download it from the U.S or European Amazon and Origin sites.

You could buy an external DVD drive for you PC and change the region to Region 1 (North America) or Region 2 (EU) to import the game from either place.

This is all we can tell you.

[balaji_305 0]

Maxis team already announce that the SimCity will be available for purchase for PC on March 5th, 2013. Will simcity release on 5th march worldwide?Is it available for purchasing on 5th march from any country's retail stores?Please confirm me........

I live in India too and I have pre ordered. It releases by 8th march here.

[Herdervriend 46]

I do not get why we, Europe, must wait this long, 3 days more then the rest of the world. It's just SICK

[Xenocity 343]

I do not get why we, Europe, must wait this long, 3 days more then the rest of the world. It's just SICK

All those languages and cultures that the game must be localized in to comply with national and EU laws.

  Edited February 24, 2013 by CaptCity  
That sounded a little...

[nhgriffith 179]

I do not get why we, Europe, must wait this long, 3 days more then the rest of the world. It's just SICK

All those languages and cultures that the game must be localized in to comply with national and EU laws.

This isn't actually the reason why the game comes out later in these countries.

That work is already done...

By the way, the reason for different release dates is because "Week 1 Sales" is an extraordinarily important statistic when it comes to long-term sales of a game.

In the United States, the "sales week" runs from Tuesday to Monday. This is true at least for all forms of media. Music, movies, games.

Therefore, video games are always released on Tuesdays in order to maximize their week 1 sales stat. If they released the game on a Sunday, they'd only get 2 days worth of sales for their week 1 sales, whereas if they released it on a Tuesday, they get 7 days worth of sales.

Movies released to theaters actually operate on the same sales week... however what's far more important for movies is typically the Opening Night ticket sales, which is why movies are typically opened on Fridays. It's the day of the week with the highest theater attendance, and it's followed by the next 2 highest attendance days, so by opening on Friday night they maximize their Opening Night ticket sales and still get an great opening week number.

When it comes to movies in theaters, the exceptions to the rule are major holidays. Typically movies will release on Christmas day, regardless of the day of the week, but it turns out to be a more popular day to go to the movies during the last two weeks of the year than a Friday. Additionally, during Thanksgiving week, movies will typically be released on just about any day of this week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday) because typically people have Wednesday-Friday off from work/school.

Anyway, I said all that to say that's why different countries have different release days all in the same week. It's based on how that country calculates its sales week. In the United States, it's Tuesday-Monday. Japan & Australia must be Thursday-Wednesday, and Europe must be Friday-Thursday.

[simmerboy 19]

Also don't forget it will take a bit longer to ship to stores worldwide since they are over seas.

[PeterLloyd 11]

The post above pretty much describes it, though some publishers will release a game on a Monday night/Tuesday Morning so they can count towards the world wide sales. I think that because it is a PC game their will be a large proportion of digital downloads so they might want to spread the release over a couple of days to ensure the bandwidth for the download is sufficient. 

[nhgriffith 179]

Also don't forget it will take a bit longer to ship to stores worldwide since they are over seas.

The post above pretty much describes it, though some publishers will release a game on a Monday night/Tuesday Morning so they can count towards the world wide sales. I think that because it is a PC game their will be a large proportion of digital downloads so they might want to spread the release over a couple of days to ensure the bandwidth for the download is sufficient.

Neither of these things have anything to do with it guys.

Look, the Gold announcement was made five days ago. Even if it took them until this coming Tuesday to finish printing all the discs, that still gives them an entire week to ship the product worldwide. This is easily accomplished.

As for games being released on Monday night/Tuesday morning, yea. Games are released at 12:01am Tuesday. This is the official start of the sales week in the United States. That's why games have midnight releases. The game shows up in the store on Friday... and the store has to sit on it until Tuesday before they can sell it. The publisher specifically makes them wait until that day to sell it in order to not mess up their week 1 sales figure.

And what happens if your store decides to sell copies before Tuesday? You're in legal company, and you probably aren't getting games from that publisher for a while... and if you're a game store, that's a major hurt to your profits.

As for the download and bandwidth issue? Eh, maybe. But honestly, I imagine that there is an entirely separate Origin server for the different continents... and if this is the case, staggering release days by continent in order to ease bandwidth issues makes literally no sense. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if they have the Origin client set up for P2P downloading.

[13thRaptor 0]

I'm not entirely sure this is allowed to be discussed, but wouldn't running a proxy enable you to bypass local release dates? I remember it being done for Battlefield 3 which was also an origin release.

[simmerboy 19]

Also don't forget it will take a bit longer to ship to stores worldwide since they are over seas.

>The post above pretty much describes it, though some publishers will release a game on a Monday night/Tuesday Morning so they can count towards the world wide sales. I think that because it is a PC game their will be a large proportion of digital downloads so they might want to spread the release over a couple of days to ensure the bandwidth for the download is sufficient.

Neither of these things have anything to do with it guys.

Look, the Gold announcement was made five days ago. Even if it took them until this coming Tuesday to finish printing all the discs, that still gives them an entire week to ship the product worldwide. This is easily accomplished.

As for games being released on Monday night/Tuesday morning, yea. Games are released at 12:01am Tuesday. This is the official start of the sales week in the United States. That's why games have midnight releases. The game shows up in the store on Friday... and the store has to sit on it until Tuesday before they can sell it. The publisher specifically makes them wait until that day to sell it in order to not mess up their week 1 sales figure.

And what happens if your store decides to sell copies before Tuesday? You're in legal company, and you probably aren't getting games from that publisher for a while... and if you're a game store, that's a major hurt to your profits.

As for the download and bandwidth issue? Eh, maybe. But honestly, I imagine that there is an entirely separate Origin server for the different continents... and if this is the case, staggering release days by continent in order to ease bandwidth issues makes literally no sense. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if they have the Origin client set up for P2P downloading.

 

Really? It takes a week to ship from LA - Berlin worldwide? Okay I admit I don't know much about the topic of shipping. I'd imagine it takes a long time to get through customs in Europe; remember this is Europe, not the US. You're travelling through many countries and I bet for each stop is made the simcity discs have to be sent through customs, etc.

 

Don't quote me, but I don't think it would take a short amount of time to ship overseas.

[nhgriffith 179]

The discs aren't going by bus...

But here's what happens... where ever the discs are manufactured, they're packed up massively in bulk. There's entire crates full of the game. Like, massive steel boxes, right? Let's say the start shipping them tomorrow, 7 days before the U.S. release date.

They'll distribute these massive crates to a few key locations (LA, Phoenix, Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, Atlanta, etc) in the United States, and similar key locations in Europe (and everywhere) (so London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, any major city in any country the game is being released). This will all happen by air from one major international airport to another.

They're going by plane. All of these discs will be to these major locations within 48 hours. So worse case scenario, we're talking about Thursday.

Once this crate gets to London, or New York, or where ever, some of the discs will be taken out and distributed by truck within the city and in the neighboring suburbs and such. This will start arriving in the stores from Thursday night through Saturday. The rest will be flying from the major international airports in these countries to smaller regional airports, and then from their distributed by truck.

The difference in time it takes for a disc to go from LA to New York compared to LA to Berlin is the same as the difference in time it takes to fly from New York to Berlin.

And it doesn't matter how many cities they deliver it to. The amount of time it takes to get 100% of the discs delivered is exactly the same as the amount of time it takes to send an individual letter from Los Angeles to where ever in the world it takes the longest to get to from L.A.

They didn't load all the discs up on one airplane that's just going to stop off at NY, drop some off, stop off at London, drop some off, stop off at Berlin, drop some off, etc. If they distributed the discs this way, Europe wouldn't even start getting their discs until sometime next year...

[aaaling 83]

The game will be released everywhere at the same time if you’re downloading this game on Origin.

[nhgriffith 179]

The game will be released everywhere at the same time if you’re downloading this game on Origin.

No. You can't download the game on Origin any sooner then you'd be able to purchase in a store in your country.

[aaaling 83]

Oh.

[Jabo 0]

why wont they give a mac release date other then early spring, is it that difficult to determine a date with it being so close?

[Xenocity 343]

why wont they give a mac release date other then early spring, is it that difficult to determine a date with it being so close?

It has to do with getting Origin on Mac.

 

The Mac version is only buyable and playable within the Origin desktop client.

[Jabo 0]

I have origin on my Mac