I have to admit, I love simple computer games for a quick fix of distraction and sometimes frustration. There is a real industry for these games on the PC. Companies like RealArcade, MSN Zone, PopCap Games, et.al. make a living out of offering a combination of free and pay-for-play game services. I bought a couple of these games myself, stuff like Zuma, Bejeweled, Dynomite, or Bookworm. These games can be a big distraction and a killer for productivity - I created a few simple rules: No games in the office or on my work-computer, and no games before 6pm or on the weekend.

A collection of these games is available for the XBox with the XBox Live Arcade collection. This allows you to download some of those timewasters to your XBox and play them on your TV. For my taste the individual downloads are not cheap (between $9.99 and $19.99 per game), but I bet I would have fallen for a few of those (I paid about $20 for the above mentioned PC versions of the games also - $10 to $20 is about the trashhold I'm willing to invest quickly on a game).

The question I have is: Why is the "XBox Live Arcade" product only available in the US and Canada? How difficult can it be to 'port' them to the rest of the world? What is the problem ?? Licensing? Converting to the PAL screen resolution?

I want to wast more time senselessly in front of the XBox - get me my XBox Live Arcade collection in Europe!