Does anyone know why people living in the UK are forced to wait an additional 2 days seeing how the rest of EU gets it on the 25th? These release dates just does not make sense at all and honestly annoy the hell out of me. Just because of this I am forced to evacuate the internet for almost a whole week in fear of spoilers.

Sincerely,

A sad Brit =(

Probably some stupid deal they had to do with retailers that prevents then selling it before Friday. I know Game have a history of throwing their weight around with stuff like this.

@finalcell: Traditionally media items like games, movies and cds used to all get released on a Friday because it was associated with payday. People have just gotten paid and they'd be happy to drop cash on a new entertainment product because of "that Friday feeling". So shipments are scheduled to get the games to retailers midweek so they have them in time for release.

It's just a relic of a bygone time, though some places (mostly retail) will still pay their staff once a week on a Friday.

Wow if that is the case I don't even know what to say, we have to wait because the retailers think they have a bigger chance of selling games if the release day aligns with payday? Haha, that is so absurd I can't do anything except laugh. In my world I would buy the game on payday regardless of when the game is released, but I guess it's like you said "a relic from a bygone time".

@finalcell: There's a pretty good Eurogamer article from a year or two back that covers the subject pretty well.

All this does is make people resort to buying prepaid PSN gift cards for the US PSN and then downloading it from there... Which just cuts the retailers who probably initiated this out of the loop entirely. Different release dates for different regions is so archaic I can't believe it's something we still have to put up with for such a trivial product to manufacture - even worse that digital releases must abide to the dates for literally no reason other than to appeal physical shops. Makes me hope they all go outta business some day.

Because Murica!

And in this case it doesn't even end there, they follow some ancient ritual from way back when to align the release with "payday". Like a game being released on the same day as I get paid would increase the chance of me buying said game, I would buy it when I had the money regardless of when it was released. I'm trying to wrap my head around the logic used to enforce this, but I'm coming up short.

That's what you get when you drive at the wrong side of the road i guess ? It's probably a logistics thing.

@mister_v: Dying Light was available digitally for a month before you could buy a physical copy in the UK, in fact most big releases on the EU PSN are available on a Wednesday now as opposed to Fridays in stores. I only know this because on my way home from work the past few weeks I've seen posters up in GAME saying that such and such game is available for download now and you can get the credit to buy it in store.

Also I don't get what's funny about the Friday/payday thing. After I've paid all of my bills at the start of the month I am a lot more likely to buy something like a game so I can work my budget out from there as opposed to the middle of the month where my money is typically tighter.