a lower turn out in europe can lead to a loss in rofit for ude. that puts more pressure on ude over in the us to sell more. we are getting these new formats because ude europe has run out of money, you better hope that the us doesnt start to lose otherwise you will soon be in the masters challanging wondering where all the players have gone.

I think the problem is that UDE doesn't know who their target audience is. Vs. is a game with superheroes and here in europe tht automatically means it is for kids. Every day when I'm in the train and start to read my american comics people look very strange at me (I'm 37).

Most people in germany (I can't speak for other european countries) that play Vs. don't know who G'nort is or are remotly interested in the comics. They play Vs. because it is the best TCG currently available and don't care if Superman is fighting against Magneto or Ape X is fighting Detective Chimp.

The new "cool" names of the tournaments in europe sound a lot like UDE is trying to get younger people to play (and buy) Vs. but I don't think that this will work. Vs. is much to complicated to appeal to a larger younger crowed.

For that reason I don't believe you can compare the situation in europe with the state of affairs in the US.

What I do think is that the whole community will loose a lot if the new structure in europe will result in less people playing Vs.

To touch on your original point, Europe as a whole has a bigger GNP than the USA. So this means that in terms of relative spending Europe, you would think, is pretty important to UDE's income projections. Germany especially is a huge market for all types of card and board gaming, and many of the games that are popular in the US and the rest of the world now originated in Germany.

UDE's failure in Europe means that they are missing out on a huge marketplace. Examining the differences between the way VS has performed the US and European markets it seems to me that the finger can be pointed squarely at UDE Europe.

How is it possible that a game featuring - for the main part - universally known and loved comic book characters can do so badly in a part of the world that has a relatively high income and education levels? Well as a shop-owner as well as a player I can point to a series of errors that UDE have made marketing the game and promoting it through organised play.

If VS continues to fail to take off in Europe, and it now looks like UDE Europe have gone into damage limitation mode - trying to save as much money as possible with their new OP structure - it can only be a bad thing for the future of VS, and UDE as a whole. How many large, successful games companies are there which only focus on the US and ignore the rest of the world?

This is exactly the WRONG argument. I'ts a bit like saying that a game about soccer has to be successfull in the states too. Here in germany nearly nobody knows those "universally known and loved comic book characters". People know some of the big ones mostly because there are movies about them but that's it. I watched the Red Sox / Mariners game some days ago and one anouncer called one reliever of the Mariners "Wolverine" all the time because he had sideburns. This is totally unthinkable here. Only very few people would get that "joke".

Vs. is success full here because it is a very good game. period. UDE has to understand that and forget about that "Superhero" and "Appeal to kids" thing.

I think this thread is slipping into another blame x for Europes VS problems. There are already threads for that. Evilbaby is after info on whether the state of VS in Europe will affect the state of VS in the US.

I think this site is in itself evidence of what a global game VS is and how we interact on a global scale. We talk about VS together. We talk about decks, rules, the metagame, tournaments, and the game in general, as well as of the wall subjects (mostly started by Stu - Gay Magic Unicorn anyone?). This is not actually playing the game, but it is part of what keeps us interested. If it wasn't you wouldn't be reading this or posting. If Europeans stop playing, you will lose a lot of the contributors to this site, and you will lose their insights into this game we love.

To a degree Starocotes is right. The players over here who play because they love comic books don’t need anyone to promote the game to them. What UDE need to do is to take a chunk out of the MTG playing contingent. And that will not happen if they get rid of competitive play, which they basically just did. Sure I find the comic book element of VS cool, but even if it was about characters I’d never heard of it’s still be the best TCG around. That’s what UDE need to push here.

Magic is massive in Europe because it is marketed right, YuGiOh is massive in Europe because it is marketed right. VS can be massive in Europe if it is marketed right!!!

I think it more likely that UDE Europe never had any money to begin with, and now that UDE Everywhereelse has seemingly cut monetary ties, they have to create an OP system that is better suited to their ability to support. So there initial statement that the pre-existing OP didn't fit the player base was bull, infact it didn't fit them.

Kergy talks specifically about Europe as a resource. What are your thoughts (by you I mean you Euro folks) on how Europe has been under tapped(pun intended) as a resource for the game, and what can be done to maximize the use of the European resources?

Personally, i'm suprprised and a little fearful. I don't know about market figures, but if you asked me I'd say Europe sales are better than Asia sales. Not just that, I don't know of any Asian players that actually go to the PC. I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth here, but I can't help but wonder why and how Asia is keeping its PCQs and 10ks.

Are 10k's and pcq's the only reason to play? The game was just as fun in my basement as it has since jumping into majors...

I can understand the lack of sneaks or pre-releases...that's terrible

I had the original intention of playing VS just for fun.
Our club had lots of people playing the game and it was booming. We had 3 of us goto PC Amsterdam and we were travelling for the PCQs in the UK and I managed to attend 2 US PCs with the money I got from Amsterdam, meeting awesome people along the way and making great memories.

I'll still play for kicks but my interest in "testing", trying to break cards and such are now extremely limited.

It's like being shown what it would be like to have everything you've always wanted and then the next day for it to be taken away.

I feel toyed with and never important in the first place.

There's always been an issue with card games in Europe due, in some part, to the different costs of cards. I'm in Britain and I know for a fact that a lot of people don't buy their cards here, they buy boxes etc. from America because they're cheaper. By doing this, they're not contributing to UDE of Europe's profits but I've gotta say, I don't blame them.

This then means that if UDE messes up in Europe, the players will no longer be buying cards from America and while this might not make TOO much difference (depends on how much we buy from you LOL) it could mean that there's a loss of profits in USA as well, meaning that UDE will start having problems with money etc. and BOOM same problem we've got here.

Unlike Duncan, I've not been to a single PC, unfortunately, I haven't had time to play in more than 2 PCQs personally, but I was at the London 10k and I've got to say that despite the pressure, this had to be one of my favourite tournaments that I have ever been to (YGO Nats included) because the atmosphere was incredible. I met a great deal of players, some of which I am still friends with today and I also learned a great deal about the mindset of "professionals" as I had never played against someone who makes a career out of this before. It was an incredible experience.

This won't happen again. Why? The "Master Challenge" is our version of a 10k now. However, you have to pay 5 PC points to enter it which some of the coolest guys can't afford or might prefer to save for the actual PC. The prizes aren't as good, so many will be discouraged from it entirely. It sucks.

It might also mean that PCs will have less players due to Europeans moving back to Magic in protest. I'll admit that I don't know how many Europeans travel to the PCs, but we have a fair bit from the UK and it's one of the smaller countries. If America has less attendance to its PCs, won't that have an impact on the game as well?

To continue on from EvilBaby's point I do think there was an oppurtunity missed after Amsterdam last year.

EVERYONE and I so do mean EVERYONE enjoyed Amsterdam and it gave a real feel and taste for the game for everyone who was involved in Europe.
I remember the period of time when the game was getting slightly stale because of Curve Sentinels but it was bearable and we were looking forward to the new PC annoucements.
At Indy it was shock horror to be told that there were 2 new dates for the PCs and that non of them were in Europe - the cheers for New Orleans was ironic as it was probably the last thing I wanted to do at the time (this being before the disaster of course).

UDE Europe may not be UDE but they're still involved money wise. Is it wrong of me to say why couldn't they just pay for the PC again? I mean how many players from Europe buy their product in Europe anyway for a 2 wrongs make a right analogy.

IMO if were was a Euro PC this year when people would still be very interested and enthused, PCQ attendances would have been good despite the Sents/DCMA fiasco and people would probably still buy boxes from the US but more people would do so now as well as more people buying from Europe.

Oppurtunity missed and very much near dead now.

Lets do a little math here. I can only do that for germany, but I think it is one of the bigger Vs. markets in europe and so it should be a nice way to demonstrate what I'm getting at:

Pricemoney for 2 10K's last year (Munich and Bremen)
-> 20000 $

Pricemoney for 24 PCQ's (1 each month with a sealed and a constructed part) -> 6000 $

26000 $ only in pricemoney, lets say booster, location, staff and so on is payed by the entry fee.

How much does UDE earn with the sales of one display? I think it is save to asume that it can't be more then 10 $ since distributors and retailers want to earn some money too and shipping and handling isn't that expensive.

So that should be 2600 displayes sold in germany alone in the last year, 650 per expansion. Frankly I don't see any way how UDE (this time it doesn't matter which one) could sell that much.

By those figures, you're talking about at least a few hundred people bying a box or two out of the population of Germany from German-based sources. One problem with the 'untying' of the UDE companies seems to be that the online distribution sales skew sales results in favor of countries that sell the most online product, which I'd suspect is a mostly US-expanding setup. Therefore, depending on the price differences and ability to get product in a reasonable time (given the horror stories I'd heard about shipping problems delaying European distributed product), it's quite possible that you'd need three or four times the previously estimated audience to produce numbers that seem reasonable for these types of events, possibly even a good deal higher than that if the company's not subsidizing the events as much.

In the end, if UDE Europe is in a position where it CANNOT afford to bite the bullet and take a short-term loss to build a base for future profits (a'la UDE proper or Microsoft with the X-Box), it might be necessary for the main company to throw money into the Euro OP program. Boycotting the game isn't going to do anything but justify UDE Europe's cutbacks, and could easily put the spiral into a death knell for any sort of real support for VS OP in Europe. A possible compromise plan might be to buy some product from in-Europe sources, attend the basic event (but not the PC point costed ones), and be sure to write in / get in contact with UDE Europe, and let them know how they'd get MORE sales and BETTER attendance by investing some more in tournament prize support. Given the nature of business psychology, this is likely to get quicker positive results from a turtling company than the alternatives.

Unfortunately UDE Europe does not seem to be in any sort of position to answer enquiries made directly of it. I've heard of non-responses or responses that took far too long to resolve anything on such topics as marketing, convention attendance, hobby league and prize support.

It's always seemed to me like UDE Europe is three guys and a donkey inside a caravan with dial-up internet and carrier pigeons for communication.

UDE US needs to really give them something to work with.

c.s.