SCEE on Missing PSN Titles: “We’re doing our best to resolve it.”

While the Playstation Store staff try hard to please gamers in every region, Sony’s digital retail sector has received criticism for denying European gamers downloadable titles such as Capcom’s Street Fighter II Remix and the Penny Arcade Episodes.

These downloadable titles are rarely locked to specific regions, but with Sony disallowing prepaid credit card services such as Entropay, purchasing the games can be tough.

We got in contact with developers, publishers and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe to find the reason behind the missing titles.

All the publishers we spoke to echoed the same remark, pointing blame at Sony for the independently run retail hubs in each of the Playstation Store’s regions.

“Sony’s process for getting titles on PSN varies in North America, Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia”, said Joel De Young, COO of Hothead Games, the Canadian Developers behind Penny Arcade’s episodic RPG. Capcom, when quizzed about Street Fighter’s appearance on the PSN, told us “that’s a question better directed at the console manufacturers themselves”.

The situation isn’t quite as dire as this article might imply; out of the 78 PSN Originals on the American Store, 65 of them have made their way to the European shop. Disregarding obvious American exclusives, such as NFL Score Charts and games based on American TV Shows, only nine games are still exclusive to the US PSN.

The quantity, however, is far outweighed by the quality of the missing games. Q Entrainment’s Lumines Supernova joins Penny Arcade and Street Fighter as much anticipated titles. The full list is as follows:

Cash Guns Chaos
Cuboid
Lumines Supernova
Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode One and Two
PowerUp Forever
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars

Comparing the competition, Microsoft evidently treats the Xbox Live Arcade store as a single global entity, with only a handful of games, ranging from Crossword Puzzles to Spongebob Squarepants games, missing from the Euro line-up.

Penny Arcade, Street Fighter and PowerUp Forever also feature on Xbox Live Arcade, and on Microsoft’s service their European counterparts debuted day and date with the American store.

We asked Sony Europe’s Playstation Network PR manager why the PSN releases differ from Xbox Live Arcade’s global releases, and he told us “this has been an ongoing issue and we’re doing our best to resolve it.”

Whether that means rewriting the list of requirements for upcoming releases, or working with closely with Sony of America and third parties to ensure closer release dates, is unclear, but it’s good to see Sony taking the initiative.

If there’s one phrase that describes the Playstation 3’s online service, it’s “playing catch up”, and the Playstation Store is not immune. Splitting the store into fragmented regions has hurt European gamers week after week when their much anticipated titles fail to show. Hopefully Sony’s resolution bares results.

Fortunately, Hothead enthusiastically told us “Episode One of the Penny Arcade series should be released in Europe in a matter of days” and Battle-Cars is set for Thursday’s update. Capcom disappointingly couldn’t offer the same good news, telling us that “[We] have no updates on HD Remix’s future presence on the [European] PSN store, sorry.”