Why civilization-4 is not available in India?

[abhijit_reddevil]

We have been searching for the last two months or so since it was released worldwide on 24th oct'05, but the legal version is not available in any of the shops selling CD-ROMs. It is only available on ebay India.

Whenever I try to enquire about the same in the shops (including Planet M and Music world), they seem least interested. Perhaps THEY DO NOT KNOW that it is the PC game of the year, it is the strategy game of the year and one of the contenders of the overall game of the year among ALL platforms. They always tell me that it will be available within the next seven days. They have been telling this for the last two months but those seven days never come.

Additionally it is also surprising that games released after the release of civ-IV (eg: Need for speed: most wanted) are available.

It is a entirely different issue that I am getting my copy from ebay.

What do you guys think? Are not any of the distributors here (gayatri impex, milestone, sujata softech, e-expressinteractive) not importing it at all?

If that is the case, then all of them should not be in this business of distribution for obvious reasons.

Neither are the CD's of FEAR available with them...

All the gaming sites (read: IGN, Gamespy, Gamespot, strategygamer, etc) have acknowledged the greatness of civilization-IV.

Perhaps this post and all the links for the reviews should be forwarded to the distributors so that they have 1% common sense and make it widely available here in India.

What are your opinions?

[john_the_ultimate]

You are right digitized but there has to be some problem. Otherwise why would they not make it available, afterall they are in this business and that too to earn profit. Perhaps there is not a big market for strategy games as it is for fps and action\adventure games. They should give all genres equal preference. Actually I am not able to think about a legitimate reason for not introducing CIV-IV to indian market. It could be some internal problem between 2K GAMES and indian disributors.
And it is we people who suffer.

[abhijit_reddevil]

Completely agree with you John, there seems to be really some internal problem between 2k games and Indian distributors. But I do not agree that they do not seem to prefer strategy games. Look at the Age of Empires series, or for that matter the RON series. But of course people would argue that they are RTS's, but on the other hand, I had personally bought the Civ-II CDROM (Microprose) from Musicworld only.

There are very few games as great as the civilization series...and I would say as addictive as the same. Even I spent hours and hours playing Call to power and call to power-2 after civ-II. But Mr.Sid Meier is a man from a different world. He's a genius. Sorry if I get carried away but that's the way it is. But Call to power and CTP-2 could not recreate the magic of civ-II. I am not saying that the work of activision is bad...but microprose and now 2K games did a much better job.

Forum members must have noticed by now that how much I am addicted to it. As soon as I read the reviews on gamespy, gamespot and IGN, I had decided to buy it, no matter what.

Another surprising fact, Civ-II was one of the top 5 multiplayer games of 2005. Now no one could have expected that...the MULTIPLAYER game of the year contender from a civ game.

I must become a member of the civfanatics forum...now after all this.