Things have gotten a lot better in recent years with regard to the delay between US and NZ release dates for video games, but often when there is a delay for a PAL release, the UK is a good market to watch because Australasia usually isn’t any more than a few weeks behind.

It was with great interest therefore that I read EA’s announcement yesterday that Rock Band would finally be releasing on May 23rd in the UK after having been unavailable anywhere but the USA since last year. I’ve spent countless hours playing the Guitar Hero series and have been looking forward to Rock Band for a long time.

So that’s the good news, because purely on that information it means that NZ might have a chance of seeing the game before the end of next month.

The bad news however is that the game has been priced at a whopping 180 pounds. Once converted to US dollars, that is more than double the price that US consumers have been paying. What a shocker. That potentially puts the New Zealand price up over $400 and possibly even as high as $500; and the higher the price gets the less likely the game will even make it to NZ. I’m suddenly wondering if our market is big enough for Rock Band… and I won’t be surprised if it isn’t.

Fingers crossed I’m wrong.