Since Atari announced that Sony had taken over publishing rights for the PAL version of Ghostbusters, many gamers saw it as Microsoft's biggest rival taking an easy way to boost their sales, whilst damaging the competition.

Seeing as Atari are still handling the launch for all major platforms in the US, it does seem strange that Europe and Australia get a Sony exclusive.

Our friends over at Ghostbusters Fans have taken a step back, and looked at things from a different perspective...

"Many fans are upset over the information that has been released about the delay of Ghostbusters the Video Game in Europe and Australia. Some of the news is misguided and many are seeing it as a way for Sony to monopolize the Ghostbusters game. Let me say that all gaming markets will be getting Ghostbusters on all major platforms . As noted in the GamesIndustry article Atari has been in a financially unstable situation and that is why they were bought out by Infogrames. They do not have the resources to do a world wide launch of Ghostbusters the Video Game in all markets simultaneously.

Instead of pulling off a poor launch everywhere in June 2009, they decided to focus their time, money and resources to North America only... delaying Ghostbusters the Video Game in all PAL markets (I am not sure if Japan is affected). This is purely because of Atari. They would rather delay the release in order to give Europe and AU the proper release that it deserves at a later date.

Now where the confusion comes in is that Sony has decided to pick up the pieces and release the game AS PLANNED on June 19th. This is because they have invested millions of dollars in getting a huge 25th Anniversary release going. That includes the Video Game, Blu-Ray, Mattel Toys, Minimates, Comics, T-Shirts... Everything.

They could not let Atari drop the ball when they have so much riding on this. So what Sony did was step up and decide to release the game on PS2 and PS3 only in June in Europe and Australia. (North America is getting all platforms released from Atari on June 16th). This is not some diabolical plot to make PS3's sell more units like many are making it out to be. It is purely Sony doing its best to get what it can out there early for fans.

This isn't so disappointing. This delay will give Atari time to collect money and resources to give Europe and AU the Ghostbusters release it deserves for XBox 360, Wii, PC and DS, rather than get a trickle of games and widespread unavailability or support. Atari is going to give everyone else a great launch for the video game this fall. So for everyone in the UK, this means that you guys will have to wait a little longer to get the game on Xbox's and Wii's, but it will be worth the wait."

What do you guys think? Head over to the forum to discuss, and many thanks to AJ Quick of Ghostbusters Fans.

Article (C) 2009 AJ Quick of GBFans.com & Britxbox.co.uk