differences in the wii consoles/games?

[lex.aut]

hi community.
let me start this way: i'm an austrian gamer suffering from the release dates in europe~

okay, so the release date for SSBB is not sure yet but we expect the game to come out around june 2007 which means that europeans will be able to play it around february 2008. well, at least the translators usually take a bit more than 6 months to prepare the game for the european consoles.
but what are the differences in the wii consoles that are sold in japan, america and europe? why do american translators only need about 1 or 2 weeks to release a japanese game in their country and why do the european ones take 6 to 8 months?
i don't know the answere but i do know that i'm not willing to wait till 2008 to play SSBB, so i'm planning to purchase the american version (which will of course cost "some" money to import).
unfortunately i couldn't find out anything about the needs of a european wii-console to read the american version of games. the PS 2 needed a chip or a cd with slide-card, but what does the wii need?
is anyone informed about what a european wii needs to read the american versions of games?

pre-thanks to all answeres and please excuse my bad english ^_~

 

[Mr.GAW]

I'm a noob when it comes to technology, but I think I heard something about the Wii being region-locked, meaning you can't import games. I could be completely wrong, and there's probably some way to hack it, but you may be out of luck.

 

[Zink]

Also, almost nobdy expects the game as early as June. The best guess is probably closer to October. However, I don't think it would take 6 months to translate. It's possible they want to release it in the US/Japan first, then wait and see if there are any gamebreaking problems like flamecancelling. Then they fix it for the PAL Europe version.

 

[Chill]

As of now there is no devicde for the Wii to play import games.

Games typically arrive in the US market before the European market because the US market is larger. Also when a game comes to the US it only needs to be translated into English. When a game goes to the European market it needs to be translated into several langauges.

 

[Mic_128]

There will most likely eventually be some sort of Freeloader for the Wii like there was for the cube. You suck in a special Disk, loaded up, then took out the Disk and stuck in the other Disk.

 

[lex.aut]

However, I don't think it would take 6 months to translate.

i calculated with 6 months since the release of SSBM was 21st november 2001 in japan, 3rd december 2001 in the usa and 24th may 2002 in europe. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Smash_Brothers_Melee)
but well, i really don't know anything about the things that need to be fixed so you're probably right.

 

[FireBomb]

Well since Brawl is a fighting game, it's not going to take as long to translate as an RPG, for example. You'll just have to get whatever oppritunity comes first if you want it as soon as possible.

 

[Armygeddon Bomb]

Well, if I am correct, it is because that Europe has many languages including French, German, Polish, and such. America has English, and Japan has Japanese. So it takes longer to translate multiple languages.

 

[lex.aut]

Well, if I am correct, it is because that Europe has many languages including French, German, Polish, and such. America has English, and Japan has Japanese. So it takes longer to translate multiple languages.

naw, i don't think that's the main reason...
you see, in the european version there are 5 languages: english (which is already done), german, italian, fra and one other which escaped me..
i seriously doubt that it takes 6 months to translate an english text into 4 languages (at least not in a game like ssbm). plus they didn't even synchronise any of the voices. f.e. jigglypuff's german name is "pummeluff". in ssb this character talked german. also, the menu was fully translated and there was no english voice at all.
so why in the world does it take them 6 months to translate like 50 sentences into 4 languages?