thomas fitzgerald.net

Irish iPhone and iPod touch owners visiting the recently launched App store are a little perplexed about the complete lack of any games. Going to the Games section on the iPhone results in a completely blank page while the App store home screen in iTunes makes no mention of any games what so ever, apart from a similarly empty section in the categories list. Compare this to the App store in virtually every other country, all of which offer a similar lineup of games for Apple’s new mobile platform.

One would hope this is simply teething problems with the store roll out, and given the disaster that has been the iPhone 3G launch, this is not beyond the realms of possibility. The only other reason I can think of is that Apple is awaiting ratings from the Irish censors office, as games here require age ratings like movies, but then so does the UK and their store seems fine. It has been suggested that it could be a licensing issue, but I find it hard to believe that if Croatia, Malaysia, Chile and Guatemala all have no problems with game licensing there would be an issue with licensing in Ireland. What’s more, the Irish iPhone pages on Apple’s website clearly show games, and o2 stores here are advertising super monkey ball among others on their in-store displays. Console games are generally released on the same day here as in the UK and Sony’s online Playstation Network store has pan european games releases so why can’t Apple? I have attempted to contact Apple regarding the issue but I don’t expect a response any time soon.

I hope this issue will be resolved before too long though. Ireland may be a small country, but it has the highest rate of mobile phone usage per capita in Europe and one of the highest rates of disposable income on the continent, so It would seem silly that Apple would snub such a lucrative market. The lack of any games what so ever to me suggests that it is simply a database error on the iTunes servers. Hopefully there will be an answer soon, but in the mean time, if you are an Irish customer I suggest you use the iTunes feedback form to let Apple know there’s a problem.

[UPDATE: See the latest on this issue]