I recently did some research as to what differs between the US, Japanese and European Xbox live offers and I was more or less shocked at the huge amount of difference in what extra non-game material the US has available in contrast to us here in Europe. Adult Swim cartoons? HD movies? Anime? You know what the 'best' thing I can download? Some random music videos by lesser known artists, if I'm lucky. It truly is a shame. What be your thoughts on this matter?
That's why a lot of Europeans created a second account that was registered to a US address, so they can check the US version of Live to get the free content and stuff. It's officially against the Terms of Service I think, but a lot of people outside the States have a US gamertag. And MS don't want to go banning those gamertags as it would hurt their figures when they want to say how many gamertags have been registered :)
It is surprising at the huge amount of extra stuff only available on US xbox live
It's because of copyright issues. MS can't just distribute movies in any country it pleases; it has to comply with the laws of each different country. There are a lot of parties involved, and of I'm guessing that each party's lawyers want to string out the process as long as possible so they get paid more.
On the plus side, the US was a test market for the movies and TV show content, and they've worked out the kinks. By the time they roll it out in Europe (which I heard they were planning to) it should be as smooth as butter.
GAME STORE --- US / UK All Games -------- 434 / 407 XBLA --------------- 142 / 138 xbox originals --- 18 / 16 Game demos -- 157 / 150 Themes ---------- 277 / 218 Gamerpics ------ 288 / 224
VIDEO STORE --- US / UK All Movies -------- 402 / 94 All TV Shows --- 394 / 0 Music Videos --- 159 / 23 (combined TV & Music vids, but there are no TV shows) Game Videos --- 238 / 205 Shorts ------------- 94 / NA (no option for shorts)
The numbers are the number of categories with something in. So TV shows 394 means there were 394 different shows, but each one could contain anywhere from 1 episode, to multiple seasons each with 20+ shows. So the biggest difference by far is in the Video Store. Hopefully we will be getting access to a bit more of this in the near future.
PS. Gotta love Private Chat for getting this sort of info quickly :D We were surprised at how big the difference was.
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