With Relic now going to Sega, I suppose the homeworld IP goes with them. What's the situation with Sega and DRM? Any hopes of them making it to GOG?

The Homeworld IP is not going with them. THQ's legacy assets have not yet been auctioned off.

See this article for details:
http://kotaku.com/5978531/thq-is-gone-now-what-the-hell-happened-to-homeworld

Seeing as Sega is on Dotemu and not GOG I'd guess that regional pricing is the issue.

Looks like Homeworld was bought by Crytek...


ooops, or was it Homefront... ;p

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/dear_gog_team_where_is_sega

That's certainly interesting. I'll have to keep an eye on that "bucket" The forum search kinda sucks, doesn't it?

SEGA might be okay with the DRM, although they currently seem to love Steamworks. But it's their policy of not selling PC games in Japan that will prevent them from being on GOG. Also note that they only sell some games on DotEmu -- the few they will sell in Japan. DotEmu don't have the ones they don't sell here...

Im curious why they don't sell PC games in Japan?. Is any of the Football Manager type games for example sold there? (2008/2009/2010/2011/2012) ?

I would be more concerned about the Total War games. Ah, Japan, source of much awesome stuff and even greater frustration. Wasn't it enough not allowing me to play Valkyria Chronicles III?

Which interestingly was also from Sega. Why do they hate money so much? I can understand not wanting to spend money on distribution etc..., but it's a darn digital download! They don't even do the direct support! How can you justify not selling a game to the whole world just to prevent it being bought in your home country?

Strangely enough, Football Manager is pretty much the ONLY game they sell here on Steam. Other than that, it's the first Sonic racing game (not the new one), and the first 4 sets of Megadrive packs (but not the 5th one).

They also have released some PC games specifically for Japan (Puyo Puyo, The Typing of the Dead, and Fossil Play) but they are only sold on DLSite.

The Japan problem comes from the fact that the many big game developers operate under the assumption that what works in the Japanese market WON'T work in the Western market and vis versa. You see this in things like anime as well where even when it is brought to the west the translations are adjusted to make the series more "western" in nature (this was done in the original VHS releases of some of the Ghibli films by Disney - suffice to say the second time around (the current releases) are done under a stricter "no changes" policy enforced by the Ghibli studios).

The other factor is likely translation which for Japanese to English and vis versa (as well as other languages) introduces a lot of complexity and thus also increased costs. It is also an area where if its not done well many things can be lost in translation - this can potentially mean that any translation requires the production of additional game content to extend or shorten select scenes or events so that they are conveyed in their original context when translated. Game companies generally dont' want to do this (and if the title isn't made multi-language from the design phase it can be hard to almost impossible to go back in and do at a later date after release).

Two things:

1 - SEGA do support consoles. So a lot of games they release on the PC ROW get released on console only here -- eventually.
2 - The Japanese PC market is rather unique in that it is fully prepared to play in English, so Japanese translations are more a bonus than expected. In fact many "localised" retail PC releases were simply a translated manual.

Ahh the point on being willing to play English is very interesting. I know that many countries do have english as a main second language (second language studies in the UK are, generally not that strong overall) even though they prefer more localised translation for games and other products.


I suspect then the reverse is more true, that its harder to port the games to the english speaking market - heck i know quite a few games from even quite strong series never make it outside of Japan (then again some also never make it across the sea from the USA as well - regional limitations are a pain even today with digital distribution cutting out much of the transporting costs for companies).

It may make sense to not translate and distribute a Japanese game to the rest of the world, as it does take effort and it might be not worth it (although I doubt a DD only version wouldn't pay off, but it's not like I know hard facts). It doesn't make sense to not release a game on an online platform because Japanese people will be able to buy them. It costs literally nothing and is just free money for them. I can understand not releasing a retail version because they think it won't do well, but not pairing with GOG due to that reason? It's so dumb I must be missing something. Same for having localized console versions and an international PC version, yet not allowing for the PC version to be sold. Absurd.

I seriously feel for you not having the chance to buy the total war franchise, which ironically had it's first (and latest) installement set in Japan. It's so sad that I would mail you my retail copy of "shogun: Total War" if it wasn't in Spanish. At least I think it was.
Believe, in places such as Spain the idea of "English as second language" is much overrated. And people still play videogames in English when no other choice is given, but the localization usually means a bonus to sales. Which is why they do it, I suppose. I suspect Japan to be a similar case, I got a feeling 2nd language wise they were generally on par with, maybe a bit above, Spain. Heck, the main reason I originally learned English was to understand my computer!