Release Country TLD Master List

[telly]

[MX] needs to be added

[tripredacus]

Added.

[lio89]

after getting a PM from tripredacus and long reading, I though about the case of FR-NL box text games with not the red "attention" should be more [BE] games then?

additional question : is there are Dutch members here? if yes : do you have games with 100% dutch text box, or are they all FR-BE?

[fazerco]

Yes and yes. of ja en ja dus.

[lio89]

Thanks for your answer, then, for those games, [BE] should be the right one if you have 100% dutch games, or [BE][NL] as those game can also be sold in the nederland?

Dankejewel voor your answer

[fazerco]

Now its NO.

There are some dutch boxed games, as there are french boxed games.

But there are also the dutch/france boxed games. Those are NOT the same games as the only dutch boxed games.

[tripredacus]

It is important to look at each individual item as its own thing. There is no blanket way to look at a game and say "they are all like this" because we can always find instances where they are not.

I always have said that if you are working on an item in the db and are not sure, just ask someone. Maybe someone in that country the thing is from, or where you think it is from. Or ask into the forums. We have people from all over the world and have a better understanding of the market in which they live in. It never hurts to ask. And as I put before, it is better we put in the correct info than to guess and get something wrong. It happened a lot on this site for many years, where entries evolved into "frankenstein" games, containing a mismash of correct and incorrect info.

[tripredacus]

Hmmm. I think I'd like to suggest a conversation about that then.  Using [CN] to cover all of SEA doesn't seem like the right way to go.  ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 provides a series of alpha-2 codes that can be user assigned and the ISO 3166/MA will never use the codes in updating process of the standard.  I'd like to put forward the suggestion of using something like AA or XA for SEA categories.  Merge Switch[TW] and Switch[CN] into Switch[XA] and use TLDs like the [EU] categories or further split the Switch categories into Switch[HK], Switch[SG], Switch[TW], and leave Switch[CN] for the Chinese region locked releases.

from: https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,10555.msg185056.html#msg185056

As I had put into the TLD post in the Advanced Guide, we are using ccTLD, but that actually corresponds to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. If we are to fully adhere to this standard, we would be able to select from these:

AA, QM-QZ, XA-XZ and ZZ.

To represent South East Asia, or even perhaps all of Asia and allow India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel into there... Or perhaps we can just use XA to be Eastern Hemisphere that isn't Europe so that South Africa could also have a place to go.

Then we can change all [CN] cats to [XA] and move the South African items out of the [EU] categories where they exist.

BUT that then leaves us with the issue of the elephant in the room: NA

There is nothing in this ISO that has a representation for North America. It only has US, CA and MX. Would we then use something like XN to replace NA, or change all NA into US? And what would be used for South America?

As it stands currently, we use ccTLD as reference and not adhere to any specific ISO. Having to deal with ISO IRL, I know that we cannot just use part of it, but I also understand we are just using it for reference and are not seeking to become ISO certfied. But I would rather not say exactly that we are following any particular ISO standard while there are still those outliers like those stated above.

[ignition365]

Yeah.  I would say if we are going to keep NA for North America (which according to ccTLD is Namibia), then there is no reason we can't use [AS] for Asia.

Personally, I think the use of NA and AS will be less confusing for users, but I'm not opposed to using user-defined codes.

For instance, I'm fine with not adhering to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and using NA (North America), EU (Europe), AS (Asia), SA (South America), AF (Africa), etc and use short hands for continents.  Then under each continent region, use the TLD codes for releases in countries like we do in the [EU] categories.  NA where [US] releases don't require TLD, EU where [UK] releases don't require TLD, and I guess AS where [CN] wouldn't require TLD.  I don't know what the prevalent TLD would be for AS, it's also hard to tell which countries some of the games are from.

I'm also fine with us doing something like [XA] for Asia, [XE] for Europe, [XN] for North America, and [XS] for South America. But then you have the issue of what is Africa [XF]?  Maybe scrap logic and just go ordered by use [XA] for NA, [XB] for EU, [XC] for AS, [XD] for SA, [XE] for AF, and so on?

I don't necessarily see a need to use ccTLD for categories, but using ccTLD for individual entries does make sense.  If our categories serve to represent continents rather than countries, it wouldn't be necessary for it to follow the ISO, because it's not relevant.

Edit:  Hmmmm, but that makes JP as a region a wrench in the works, because it would be categorized under [AS] wouldn't it.

[tripredacus]

No I think that using XX for regions, especially to replace EU and NA would be a nightmare for our users and that is one reason why I wouldn't even want to implement it. We did have [AS] in use here but after changing to use ccTLD officially I already worked with admins to take the first step of getting rid of [AS] wherever possible. That next step of dealing with [NA] just never happened. The ideal step would be to change [NA] to [US] and then treat US like we currently do with CN. Whereas all "NA" items that are not in US go into US but use a TLD. It wouldn't change anything with those items already, because nearly all CA and MX entries are already named properly. That being said, I don't want to change EU to anything else.

If you look at the first post here, you can see I made a separation between regions and countries. I think this would give us the ability to use something else to determine region codes. Perhaps we can find some sort of existing standard that lets us use NA and EU, then see what they have for SEA but be careful to not overlap anything a country would use.

Also, I wouldn't worry about Africa that much. The only country that has regional releases that I am aware of is South Africa, and outside of the Sega Mega Drive entries, there are very few currently in the database in the other categories.

[telly]

Yeah.  I would say if we are going to keep NA for North America (which according to ccTLD is Namibia), then there is no reason we can't use [AS] for Asia.

Personally, I think the use of NA and AS will be less confusing for users, but I'm not opposed to using user-defined codes.

For instance, I'm fine with not adhering to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and using NA (North America), EU (Europe), AS (Asia), SA (South America), AF (Africa), etc and use short hands for continents.  Then under each continent region, use the TLD codes for releases in countries like we do in the [EU] categories.  NA where [US] releases don't require TLD, EU where [UK] releases don't require TLD, and I guess AS where [CN] wouldn't require TLD.  I don't know what the prevalent TLD would be for AS, it's also hard to tell which countries some of the games are from.

I'm also fine with us doing something like [XA] for Asia, [XE] for Europe, [XN] for North America, and [XS] for South America. But then you have the issue of what is Africa [XF]?  Maybe scrap logic and just go ordered by use [XA] for NA, [XB] for EU, [XC] for AS, [XD] for SA, [XE] for AF, and so on?

I don't necessarily see a need to use ccTLD for categories, but using ccTLD for individual entries does make sense.  If our categories serve to represent continents rather than countries, it wouldn't be necessary for it to follow the ISO, because it's not relevant.

Even CN has been confused for Canada by some of our users. But even so, I'm in favor of the option that is easiest for users to navigate, so I would rather keep our use of NA, EU, and so on, for usability rather than stick to a regimented system that sacrifices usability only for the sake of being consistent with ISO. I just don't see what we really gain from doing that, because in either case we're grouping continents by our own arbitrary naming system.

I just don't see the problem with using AS for Asia. Are we ever going to get a game that would use that TLD (i.e. being released in American Samoa and nowhere else)? Especially when it's a US territory to begin with?

Personally I think it's MORE confusing to say that our main NA category is US, but all our CA and MX games are also part of that category even though they weren't released in the US.

[ignition365]

Yeah.  I would say if we are going to keep NA for North America (which according to ccTLD is Namibia), then there is no reason we can't use [AS] for Asia.

Personally, I think the use of NA and AS will be less confusing for users, but I'm not opposed to using user-defined codes.

For instance, I'm fine with not adhering to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and using NA (North America), EU (Europe), AS (Asia), SA (South America), AF (Africa), etc and use short hands for continents.  Then under each continent region, use the TLD codes for releases in countries like we do in the [EU] categories.  NA where [US] releases don't require TLD, EU where [UK] releases don't require TLD, and I guess AS where [CN] wouldn't require TLD.  I don't know what the prevalent TLD would be for AS, it's also hard to tell which countries some of the games are from.

I'm also fine with us doing something like [XA] for Asia, [XE] for Europe, [XN] for North America, and [XS] for South America. But then you have the issue of what is Africa [XF]?  Maybe scrap logic and just go ordered by use [XA] for NA, [XB] for EU, [XC] for AS, [XD] for SA, [XE] for AF, and so on?

I don't necessarily see a need to use ccTLD for categories, but using ccTLD for individual entries does make sense.  If our categories serve to represent continents rather than countries, it wouldn't be necessary for it to follow the ISO, because it's not relevant.

Even CN has been confused for Canada by some of our users. But even so, I'm in favor of the option that is easiest for users to navigate, so I would rather keep our use of NA, EU, and so on, for usability rather than stick to a regimented system that sacrifices usability only for the sake of being consistent with ISO. I just don't see what we really gain from doing that, because in either case we're grouping continents by our own arbitrary naming system.

I just don't see the problem with using AS for Asia. Are we ever going to get a game that would use that TLD (i.e. being released in American Samoa and nowhere else)? Especially when it's a US territory to begin with?

Personally I think it's MORE confusing to say that our main NA category is US, but all our CA and MX games are also part of that category even though they weren't released in the US.

Strong Agree.

I vote NA, EU, JP, and AS.  Again, I just don't know what the prevalent country would be for AS.  Maybe leave ccTLD out if you don't know the specific country, so TW games can be easily identified by the GSRR ratings, a lot of Nintendo releases have colored triangles that detail what country the release is for, etc.

[tripredacus]

China was chosen as the prevalent country to represent Asia (or SEA not Japan or Korea) because Hong Kong has been part of China since 1997. You notice there are HK categories present, but they should only represent games prior to that.

I will look into creating a user poll for us to vote on which direction to move in.

[telly]

Well here's another thought. If we DID want to make things more consistent, we could combine Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong into a broad AS category so we don't have a combination of countries and continents making up our large categories like we have now. And Japan would be the country treated as the default like US is for the North American category and UK is for the Europe category.

It would be a lot of work, and I'm not sure if that would improve the database at all, but it's a thought.

[dhaabi]

Well here's another thought. If we DID want to make things more consistent, we could combine Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong into a broad AS category so we don't have a combination of countries and continents making up our large categories like we have now. And Japan would be the country treated as the default like US is for the North American category and UK is for the Europe category.

Personally, I wouldn't like to see a broad AS category for these regions. The EU categories already are far cluttered enough, so navigating through another seems irritating. I'd rather categories be as specific as possible, given that there are a suitable amount of releases in each region to warrant a specific sub-category.

On the topic of Canada, it seems as if many categories—at least for more modern consoles—have enough specific entries to warrant a category for Canadian releases to be on their own, apart from US releases. Although, that still wouldn't solve the greater issue at hand about how to handle the current NA category, as MX entries do exist there as well, albeit they are few and far between.