I always thought the region locking had to do with controlling the release of games as much as possible. They don't want the japanese Starfox Spectacular 3DS for japan cutting into the US sales. Since 3DS is going to be a big premier system, about as powerful or more then the wii, then they know the game releases will be big events.
They've sold 65Million PSPs. Not really a screw up. I am surprised there is region locking on the 3DS. I wonder if this is to help curb piracy though?
region locking on a nintendo handheld? I thought they'd never go down this road, for games anyway. It's really nice to be able to buy games at an airport anywhere in the world and play them on your portable. This is something I did quite a bit and looked forward to actually when traveling.. thanks for the killjoy.
Part of the reason for region locking has to do with distribution. If I buy a copy of Toy Story here in Australia, it will be a Region 4 disk and money from that sale goes to Disney Home Entertainment Australia. If I buy the disk from an online store from the US, I get a Region 1 disk and money goes to Disney Home Entertainment USA. In some cases it may be totally unrelated companies handling distribution in different parts of the world (for example, "Ghosbusters: The Video Game" is distributed by Atari in the US and by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in Europe) Another reason (as others have said) is cost. Often content will be cheaper in one market than it is in another market so they want to stop people in the more expensive market importing product from the cheaper market.
Profit is the main motivation, obviously. Why let your customers buy cheaper games from Asia when they can pay full price in their own country? And again, the number of consumers who will care about this will pale into insignificance compared to the number of consumers who won't even be aware such a lockout exists. Shitty, but true. I would've thought this move was pretty obvious given the DSi's region locking. Not like they'd do it there but drop it next time around.
If you compare the amount of people who will buy it from elsewhere to the people who will buy it in the shops, I'd say at least 80% WONT import it, due to laziness/not knowing how/impatience. I really can't believe sales motives are the reasons for region locking. Say 7 people buy it in the shop, 2 download it illegally and that one person buys it at the airport whilst on holiday, about to fly home, the 1 person doesn't make the difference.
It is sad to see a region-lock on a Nintendo Handheld, but obviously Nintendo surely knows very well how to sell a console (Wii is the practical demonstration that all their theories were, in fact, right).
It does though when the units are in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Besides, as mentioned above distribution is handled by separate entities. Be that entirely different corporations or sibling companies, both don't want their competitors to profit because they missed out something as inexpensive as a bit of region locking code. As said even among sibling companies (as in Sony Europe vs Sony of Japan or whatever) there will be rivalry - manager's jobs are on the line. Also Sales from airports aren't going to be 1/10, more like 1/10,000 so it isn't worth it. Makes me wonder why handheld games haven't been region locked until now?
Wow, well this is something I didn't expect to hear. Ahh... oh well, why do I feel like we will be seeing any type of 3DS R4 being made and the ability to play region locked games on that through patching? I think it'll happen. It sucks that they would make you miss out on some golden Japan only titles though. Sadistic.
Well, that's it for me. I take back my decision to buy at launch, and will wait until imports are somehow feasible on the 3DS. More than 60% of my DS games are imports, and it doubles as my Kanji Dictionary. I practice Japanese on it with the reading on games. Getting a Japanese unit is also out of the question, because I want to get games from this region as well. This is a deal breaker for me. I'm waiting until an import alternative or convincing title is in the market.
This. A couple of people I know who were ready to buy at launch have said that they'll be waiting now. Even if this is a common reaction I doubt it'll make much of a difference though, it'll still sell like crazy. The first few million sales are guaranteed no matter what they ship.
Since this is the current 3DS thread thought I'd post this here. Allotment for Japan will be 400,000 units at launch. So basically no pre-order, no unit. http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/17/report-400k-3ds-systems-available-on-japanese-launch-day/
Well wait a second, is Region Coding optional? Because they could always include it, but just not enforce it for the Video Games side of it.
All we have to go on is DSi (excluding their consoles). In that case no it's not optional. It's enforced on all DSi / DSi Enhanced games.
One of my mates has been going on about the 3DS for ages. But after bringing him up-to-date on the cost and battery situation, he's decided to wait until there's a decent price drop or a flash cart available. That's a terrible situation, but if Nintendo think they can launch a £250 handheld aimed (primarily) at kids in the current financial climate, then they've had a few too many beers :drink: I'm looking forward to seeing the PSP2 as there's a very slim chance Sony could steal the handheld market from Nintendo this time around. We'll just have to wait to see how much it is and what games are coming out for it.
I read that Japanese people are more prone to sickness from focal effects such as parallax and plane motion.
