Why do us Aussies always suffer the rough end of the stick when it comes to game releases? Games that I'm eagerly anticipating the arrival of just seem to take even longer if they're already out in some other part of the world.

For any Americans reading and wondering how bad it really is; Kingdom Hearts 2 is only coming out in Australia today! That's right, the 28th of September. That's almost a whole year after Japan got it. I know, I know the voice acting had to be done in English but if the US got it earlier this year, why couldn't we?

"What about importing games", you must be asking yourself. Well it just happens that in Australia we run on PAL systems so unless you are one of the lucky people who have a modded system importing is only a distant dream.

Recently this issue has been getting on my nerves slightly and it came to a head when I logged onto gamespot the other day, only to be notified that Australia "MIGHT" have Wii shortages at launch! "MIGHT" generally means definitely when it comes to us Aussies.

The only possible means of guaranteeing yourself a Wii is to pre-order and put your faith in Nintendo's vastly untried machine being a success. Don't get me wrong, I personally think that Nintendo are on a winner with the Wii but I still don't wanna bet $400(AU) on that before it's release.

Gaming is on the brink of becoming a form of entertainment accepted by everyone. Therefore now is the time for game developers to start getting serious about Australian releases and releasing the games to us along with the rest of the world. Their faith will undoubtably be justified.