Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix - one of Sony's missing games

If there’s one thing we expect from brands these days it’s openness. If there’s a problem we want to know why and what’s being done about it. The ease with which anyone, from a school dinnerlady to a corporate brand manager can set up a blog or Twitter account means direct conversation between brands and the public, without any filtering through the media, is easy.

Many companies are learning the right way to do it. From small internet companies like Evo Hosting (who host this site) to at least some of the the country’s biggest names (see Real Fresh TV’s analysis of Social Media usage in FTSE100 companies here), firms are learning that blogs allow them to speak directly to their customers about their successes and failures in an open way that can stave off bad publicity at very little cost.

One company you’d expect to understand this are Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE). You see, there’s a problem with SCEE that’s annoying many of their most vocal customers. The Playstation 3 features a store that allows gamers to buy and download games direct to their consoles. The trouble is that many eagerly anticipated games currently available in America have yet to arrive int he European version of the store.

Take Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, for example. It received a worldwide release in November last year. Worldwide, that is, except Europe where the game is yet to materialise. Admittedly, seeing as it’s a remake of a 15 year old game it’s not going to have huge mass-market appeal, but it’s exactly the kind of game that a significant, and very vocal, minority of gamers will want to play. Deny them their fix and they’ll kick up a stink. With the Playstation 3 languishing far behind the sales of Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s XBox 360, they could really do without any negative press.

So far Sony have said very little about the situation. British Gaming has contacted SCEE’s Playstation Network PR manager who told them “This has been an ongoing issue and we’re doing our best to resolve it”. That was it – no apology, no estimated date for a resolution – nothing. Unsurprisingly, the gamers aren’t satisfied with that response and an SCEE Equality Appeal continues apace while any posts mentioning the problem on the big games blogs like Joystiq garner huge numbers of angry comments from frustrated gamers.

What could SCEE do to correct this? If they were open with their customers, told them the reason for the hold up and gave them a date for the game’s release they’d end the anger straight away. It’d help if they even had a blog on which to do this. Their American counterparts do. The nearest we get in Europe is a semi-official blog in the form of Three Speech but even that hasn’t broached the subject of the missing games.

While SCEE avoid giving proper answers their audience gets increasingly annoyed. As one James Gadbury says on the SCEE Equality Appeal petition: “Don’t keep us in the dark. We’re getting more and more frustrated. Speak to us Sony!!”. The days of aloof, remote brands are behind us. So, SCEE, isn’t it time you caught up?

UPDATE:

ThePSN.co.uk has manged to get some answers out of Capcom UK (the UK division of the Street Fighter 2’s creator). They say the game is stuck in Quality Assurance at SCEE and has been rejected twice. While that might seem odd (it’s out everywhere else after all) there have been many complaints about the game being bug-ridden. Maybe SCEE aren’t the bad guys after all and they just want a game that works on their store. Still, they certainly should have said something themselves and not relied on Capcom to spill the beans.

Apparently a corrected version of the game should be available next month.