Atlus announced a pre-order incentive for the upcoming Playstation 3 action RPG Demon's Souls under the following headline: "PATIENCE IS REWARDED: ATLUS EXPANDS DEMON'S SOULS PRE-ORDER BONUS TO INCLUDE FULL SOUNDTRACK; IMPORTERS DEVASTATED".

The "importers" are the folks who couldn't wait to play the game which has already been released in Asia. Therefore, they paid about eighty bucks for a Korean version with a fully functional English language option. They'll be missing out a free soundtrack and 40-page art book the rest of us get when we pre-order the bona fide American version Atlus will release on October 6th. However, on that day, devastated importers can come over to my house. I'll put on the soundtrack and we can flip through the art book together. Oh, wait, no we can't. I'll be too busy playing Demon's Souls, much like they've been doing for months now, taunting me about how good it is. In fact, I won't even answer the door when they come over.

In the press release, Atlus identified themselves as "defenders of the macro-transaction (i.e., pay once, get everything)". Hear, hear. There's nothing quite so lovable as a plucky niche publisher!

Atlus has also posted an informative breakdown of what it takes to localize a game brought over from Japan.

The overall, start-to-finish procedure of publishing a localized game...might not be apparent to everyone. So here it is, the answer to the question on many people's minds: why does it take so long?