DVD version will appear a bit later.

This is really the worst marketing strategy for a game I have ever seen. There are so many guys around who loved KB and the release for the russian version was more than half a year ago...This is not what I would understand under "customer retention".

Anyway I hope you will get out the DVD version before Christmas...

Well, download is quick, easy and works for everyone as long as the site is trusted and offers a refund if problems arise. Besides, you can always burn it to a disk afterwards. Unless someone keeps a collection and feels he MUST have the boxed dvd version, everything's just fine.

EDIT: There is always the option of learning russian and getting the russian dvd version :P

Or polish,slovakian or czech. :D

This makes me wonder, how come those versions were translated that much sooner than the English one?

The original game is russian. The a slavic language. Polish, slovakian and czech are also slavic-type languages, and as such, are very similar in grammar, expressions, etc. That makes them much easier to translate.

I am (as a hobby) a WW2 military historian. I have read hundreds of books on the subject, written in English. Most of the books I have read are from the "Allied" side. Though not official, I have been told that this is because of the cost of "translation" of books written in the Russian and the German languages into English. It is said that the translation would force these books to sale at a price that would prohibit / limit its sales. I believe that its slightly possible that games are the same way, and that 1C Publishing may have a formula to determine whether a particular game would warrant and be economically feasable to translate.

Just a thought.

Hi, I'm new to the forum but am extremely excited about the game. KB The Legend was one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played on my PC, and I'm a longtime fan of the series (as well as HoMM, etc) but I am having technical difficulty with the Armored Princess Demo. Specifically, I am getting the following error:

C:\work\skyfallen\tbm\BMRender\rmode.cpp(1645): DirectX call failed: -1, -1, D3DERR_NOTAVAILABLE (This device does not support the queried technique)

I saw that this was an issue in KB The Legend, but I have already installed the latest DirectX for XP, and even tried re-instaling the game. I had no trouble playing The Legend on this same computer, but I did recently re-install windows and the same drivers, etc. Am I missing something? Are the requirements for Armored Princess higher than for The Legend? They look like the same graphic dynamics so I'd be surprised. Thank you greatly for the help... as you can imagine I'm very anxious to try the game out!!

Someone who told you this must have been either an ignorant or a liar. Cost of a good translation of an average book (especially on Central and Eastern European market which means Russian to English translation) roughly equal to the cost of 100-150 copies of a given book. So, if publisher had sold 1000-1500 copies (a very low amount, even for a niche book), the price would have been only 10% higher. Even if text requires high qualification and we double the translator's wage, it's still a far cry from limiting the sales.

The same applies to games. Of course, translation, full dubbing and testing costs much more, but on the other hand, a single edition of a mainstream (i.e. published by non-indie, renowned company) game for English-speaking countries consists of hundreds of thousands copies. In such circumstances, translation cost is also negligible. It is also correct in the case of Central European markets (Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Slovakian) that don't generate such revenues as western markets.

I work in the localisation business for more that 10 years and I have never seen single mainstream game that couldn't have been translated because of localisation cost. Delays are sometimes caused by the timing, that is, some publishers (especially those, who are either less known or cannot afford big advertisement campaign) can wait for a while because there are other blockbusters coming in a given period.

Regards