Atari - Getting Steamy

Valve and Atari have announced that a number of Atari titles are now available on Steam. Of interest to us:

In the coming weeks, The Witcher®, the award winning RPG of 2007, Neverwinter Nights™ 2 and the expansion pack NeverWinter Nights™ 2: Mask of the Betrayer - the sequel to one of the best-selling and genre-defining role-playing games ever – will also be added to Atari’s Steam lineup.

More information.

Cool … of course, there is nothing left on the list I want to play - I already have ~75% of the games there …

Except of course, once again, if you live outside NA.

There are a few up there I would plan to get, if I had the option.

You can buy games from Steam from anywhere in the world with no restrictions.

Not quite. I don't know about these Atari ones but there are (or have been) titles with international restrictions, different international release dates and different regional pricing (admittedly not many to my knowledge).

For example, THQ wasn't available in Australia for a few months.

Wow … didn't know that. They joys of international trade

Nice. If they make a nice bundle price of NWN2 and MOtB, I might get that.

I don't know about MotB but NWN2 uses Direct2Drive for an online company. I know, because I won a copy.

I imagine there are exclusivity deals with them for the time being.

Well, it is in the announcement that NWN2 and MotB will be there … so if there is exclusivity it must be just about up.

oh.

duuuuuuuh

its not that Atari has a dearth of PC titles that would sell right now.

But they need all the sales they can get, don't they.

2K, THQ, RockStar, SEGA, Atari, (and a few small ones) not avaliale in Australia and New Zealand. And A few other places like South Africa and Japan, going by the steam forums.

2K was orgionaly world wide, but no longer aside from BioShock. And while THQ was avaliable for a while, this apparently was a mistake by Valve, and their catalouge is now withdrawn.

Many titles here are also hiked up in price (The big example is that COD4 sells for 88.50 USD, compared to 49.95 mostly elsewhere). Mainly to appease traditional retail stores.


That said: I've been meaning to pick NWN2 up, so if they get around to releasing it here, I will probably do so.