japanese PS3 should I buy?

I'm still thinking about to buy a japanese PS3. I'm in Japan in a few weeks and I would really like to pick up a unit.

But I'm not sure if I should really do it. Here are my thoughts:

- A friend told me that the japanese hardware has some kind of censorship. Some games have no blood (e. g. Resistance or Uncharted). He told me that it's in the PS3 hardware and not in the game software. It's hard to believe, is that really true?

- I'm not able to watch European BluRay movie discs. But I heared that about 70% of all movies are region free. Is that true?

- Another friend told me that I should wait, because the price will drop this year and I'm not going to play very much games in this summer. So theoretically I could wait. But if Sony is not going to drop the price in the next 12 months, it would be a good choice to buy it in Japan I think.

What do you think?

 

1) Yes the censorship is true

2) I'm 99% sure Blu-rays are Region coded

 

This might be of help.
http://80.161.213.38:81/

 

I've found that depending on the game you may be connected to Japanese or US/EMEA servers....I have two games, one connects to Japanese servers and one connects to US server.

My PS3 is Japanese and the two games are US games.

So appears depending on the game it works out your region based on console or game.

Makes using a bluetooth headset interesting.....;-)

 

what a pity, The Simpsons is not region free:-( But a lot of other movies are region free instead.

http://bluray.liesinc.net

 

You can thank Sony for killing the cheaper, Region-Free, HD-DVD for that.

 

Do you own a HD DVD player then Trenton?

 

I have a pile of games titles and a pile of films and they are all from US or Euro zone, but are all working fine on a Japanese PS3. Not yet found anything (other than standard DVD and PS1/PS2) that won't play on it. Might become an issue, but not thus far.

 

Apart from the censorship issues with Japanese PS3s, the built-in region setting means you'll be connecting to Japanese servers when you play online games.

If online play isn't an issue, the best place to get a PS3 is Hong Kong. Cheapest retail price of them all, Region A (US) Blu-Ray, Japanese colour options and the 80GB option. I'm going to Hong Kong soon, so if you're in Japan sometime between the 11th and 14th of April, then I can get you one.

 

i have a Jap 20g version and play online with no worries.

I thought that the blood related items were only affected if you used an NTSC-J version of the game itself?

 

The Playstation 3 is an interesting one as some games do check the machines region and others just go by what region the disc is, probably makes making discs easier. As stated before some games will check the region of the machine and select the closest servers to it and others will select the servers of ther region of the game. Some games will swap the O and X buttons and others will default to the game region.

If you want to play games or watch movies from one region then you are probably better off buying the machine from that region.

The way I see it the only two reasons for buying a Japanese PS3 are...

White and Silver 40Gb unit
Playstation 1 / 2 game compatability in hardware in the 20gb / 60gb models (not much use unless you have a reasonable Japanese game collection).

As for blood, what are you some kind of 12 year old boy? Does the blood really make the game any different?

 

that's true, it doesn't matter mostly. But here in Germany games are censored very heavily sometimes. Best example is Half Life 1 where soldiers had been replaced with robots. That kills a lot of atmosphere. I'm not sure what's going on in Japan. If there are some games missing blood - ok I can live with it.

 

Sounds interesting. How much does a PS3 in Hong Kong cost?

btw, I'm in Japan from 31th March to 20th April. So we can meet up;-)

 

I had no idea that the japanese Version of the PS3 had censored hardware. I was just about to buy one too. I still may, the white console is very nice.

 

I'm with Parris - I got a first release 60Gb USA model from the States and it's played everything I've thrown at it, game wise and blu-ray movie wise.

It won't play any PAL DVDs (even if region 0) because it can't output DVD movie in PAL - no biggie as that's what the DVD player is for!

One other thing, I registered it in the UK when I got it home and SCEE sent me a free blu ray movie of Casino Royale (works fine), but then it connected me to the European PlayStation shop so I reformatted it and changed my address to the USA and now it connects to the default USA store.

Win win situation for me - woohoo!

At the end of the day it's only the blu ray movies that may be region coded but as far as I know ALL released games so far are region free on PS3 - can anyone confirm any that aren't?

 

All games are region free... as long as you play in HD. Some game don't have both NTSC and PAL output so...

no big deal though.

 

Why did you reformat? You can make an account for each territory. For instance, my PS3 has a US, UK and Japanese account and each connects to the respective country.

 

if you've got money for it, i'd say buy it. some good games are supposed to come out this year.

 

finally I decided not to buy the PS3 here in Japan because I bought a lot of other games and I think it s better to have a European model for full bluray compatibility.

 

just look at it before you buy it and they sometimes dont have a warrenty on them that might be china though