Soulcalibur IV Skips India, Fallout 3 To Follow?

Well, what more can we say? We’ve confirmed with local distributor e-Xpress Interactive a couple of days back that Soulcalibur IV will indeed not make it to Indian shores, thanks to the fact that it’s an Ubisoft game. Since Ubisoft doesn’t believe in offering any sort of sales concession when it comes to Indian markets, and e-Xpress, like anyone else, wouldn’t want non-existent profit margins, Indian gamers eager for Soulcalibur IV will now have to look at Play-Asia (as usual) for their imports.

Speaking to us about the situation, e-Xpress has clarified that rather than haggle with Ubi and import the games for “an obscenely high price”, they’ve elected to not import the game in all likelihood. But the real terrifying part of the conversation came when Fallout 3 came into the picture. In a press release issued last month, Ubisoft had claimed that it would be distributing Fallout 3 in some PAL territory countries in Europe including Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Which indirectly means that if India’s import were to happen via Ubi, there’s no chance of Fallout 3 ever being officially released for the consoles here.

However, after Bethesda’s Pete Hines clarified that Bethesda / 2K would still continue to be the worldwide publisher for Fallout 3 on all platforms and would be in-charge of marketing and distributing them across North America, Europe (except for some countries) and Asia, some of us have dared to heave a little sigh of relief. But we’re not going to sleep tight until we have official, final confirmation that the Indian release will definitely not be handled by Ubi for the biggest RPG this year. PC owners, as usual, have nothing to fear, considering that the game would definitely be available for their platform, no matter which company handles the distribution.

Now all we have to do is pray that Bethesda would grow a heart and release the Survival Edition to countries outside the US and we’d hopefully get our greedy hands on either the Collector’s Edition, or better yet, this one. After all, hope springs eternal.