Arcy, don't you think I'd prefer walking into my local store on the release date and just take pearl and buy it, instead of having to wait a weak until the game finally arrives from America or having to wait so many months till it finally gets here while all you Americans are already looking forward to the next game (or already have it)?
ALL Pokémon merchandise which finds its way to Europe is IDENTICAL to America's, there's no reason why they can't directly ship it to Europe. For the DS games only the boxes and play guides are different, and that's just a minor translation which can't really take longer than a day. And the fact is, they don't even make the boxes and books in America or Japan, the games come form japan, the boxes are made in Germany. Producing the games might take a long time, but still, it's not like they have to make billions of games only for the few European countries that get the English games, it's like making games for another American state, that can't be that much trouble. Ok, it might be unfair towards French, Germany and stuff, but they could at least try to read English, I mean, Belgium and the Netherlands don't get a Dutch game... And the french are always one TCG set behind anyways, why would they start caring now anyways.
It's not just that we have to wait:
Pokémoncenter.com won't ship to anywhere not-American last time I checked, I have to buy from people who bought it on Pokémoncenter.com before I can actually get them.
Other language ranger games (and UK English too maybe, I don't know) have a different password.
Where they usually release the new TCG sets at the same date as America, they now have to wait just because pearl is yet to be released here.
Because of the Wii region lock we won't be able to buy SSBB, PBR and other Pokémon-related games off ebay. And they probably won't come out here until months, to even a year after America gets them.
This all would be logical if the games had a different language, but England, Belgium and Netherlands get almost identically the same game as Europe, but with some stuff changed, which usually means we get a worse version of the game... (although I think the European ranger had a new mission, and be honest, Link>trozei)
The last event we Belgians got was an unannounced Deoxys event, nobody actually knew about it, but there was this guy with a gameboy at a Pokémon stand in a games fair handing out aurora tickets, if I'd had known that I would have brought my Pokémon game .
This where America gets JAA, Worlds, Toys 'R us mew event, ranger password, ... the list goes on :S