"Nintendo: ‘No Plans’ to Remove Region-Locking, Parental Controls Cited"

"Passionate Nintendo fans recently launched a fan campaign in an effort to convince the company to end its region-locking policies for 3DS and Wii U. Since then, its official petition has gained over 14,000 signatures and the campaign has gotten attention at several mainstream gaming sites.However, it doesn’t seem Nintendo’s going to budge on the issue. Their reason? Region-locking makes it easier to include and enforce guidelines for parental controls.
Click below for the official response from Nintendo of America.

Nintendo has no plans to remove region locking from our systems. By taking this approach, Nintendo is able to include parental controls and ensure compliance with regional standards and rating systems.
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That’s all good and well, but when your two competing console companies both manage to “ensure compliance with regional standards and rating systemsâ€￾ without region-locking their software, it makes the argument seem rather weak."


source: http://gengame.net/2013/07/nintendo-no-plans-to-remove-region-locking-parental-controls-cited/



Are you fucking kidding me Nintendo.

 

I'm still going to try to help the cause. The "parental controls" explanation is no excuse.

 

It's a bullshit reason. Its like nintendo wants to make less money.

 

While I don't really like region locking, I can see many reasons for it to exist (even justify some), and what I think is the biggest concern for Nintendo is the whole "family image" they sort of need to maintain internationally. Regional releases with different ratings, contents, etc. can in the wrong hands quickly become the most insane PR disaster. People are just looking for "scandal" headlines these days, and people would LOVE to write (and read about) that some German kid "unknowingly" gained access to Nazi Loli Simulator 2013 on his 3DS, follow that up with the previous attempts at "attacking" Nintendo in media with how kids supposedly could be "lured in and seduced" by pedophiles through PictoChat and now also StreetPass and you've got yourself a "third time's the charm" sort of deal :/

(Also, the ratings vs family control settings is actually one of the reasons why you see a lot of 360 games being region locked, 'cause after they adopted local rating settings to replace the parental control levels for titles ... games pretty much needed to be rated by the ratings boards for all regions they're to be compatible with)

 

But the xbox 360 and ps4 and xbone are all region unlocked. and all nintendo's handhelds have been region unlocked. Family controls dont need to be on a console. The parent should or can just check what games their kids own, and confiscate the inappropriate ones, its not hard. Nintendo are being bone headed. Families wont boycott nintendo because they region unlock or drop parental controls, in fact they might even gain more support. i see where youre coming from, but i strongly disagree

 

Xbox 360 is NOT region free. Some games are MULTI-REGION, just like they were on the original Xbox, but games "in general" are region locked on it (3 regions are utilized on the system, usually referred to as NTSC-U/C, NTSC-J, and PAL) (PS3 is technically also capable of region locking games, but there's only a tiny handful of region locked titles on it.)

There's a lot of things people "could" do, in terms of how to monitor their child's activity and what not, but that's just not how the world works anymore. It's amazing to see to what extent people want to put blame elsewhere than on themselves if situations occurs where the parent has to confront others (their child) with stuff ...

Also, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will be interesting to see how they actually handles their supposed region free nature. Especially in terms of parental control stuff. PS3 currently uses a 10 step (iirc) parental locking system for games, which is kinda inconveniant when it doesn't properly stack with your region's local system. (Also worth pointing out that a lot of countries in Europe have adopted PEGI ratings as enforced by law, thus requiring video game software sold in that region to carry a PEGI rating). It's also easier to launch a system as region free, rather than unlocking a system later (especially depending on how the system handles region locking in the first place; if it's a kernel/OS thing or a straight out hardware lock on the optical system or something - something you might not even be able to alter without replacing the hardware itself)

 

I couldn't stop laughing after the Nazi loli sim example. Away I think nintendo pulled the whole 'Parental control guide-lines thing' of the top of their heads so they could have an excuse.

 

It's actually the opposite. By region-locking games, they can make people from wealthier countries pay more, since they're unable to import games from cheaper regions. This is pretty much the entire reason region locking exists.

 

Yeah, I sort of view it like industry favoritism for Americans.

 

Anybody want anything else? Seems luke wants a lot.

 

This sucks for those Japanese exclusives like Professor Layton vs Ace attorney & Ace Attorney 5 or 6 plus many awesome Jrpgs

 

Senran Kagura might be this, although it might sell surprisingly well.

 

U wot

 

If Nintendo made a software that would break the region encoding and sold it on the eShop, I guess there still would be some griping.

 

yes people would complain but they would complain because it was in the eShop and they had to pay for it, Nintendo hopefully could just release an update to remove the restrictions

 

If they're sooo concerned about parental controls and rating systems (which I still believe is mostly a BS excuse), they just need to make the systems reject out-of-region games when parental controls are enabled in the first place!

Disabled parental controls = import games working fine. Enabled parental controls = nuh-uh, no imports for the little kids! Would keep everything as-is for those who have parental controls set up, and free those who don't use them of the region lock, right?

 

In 5-10 years if Nintendo doesn't listen to fan demand. They'll be reduced to nothing but a niche plug and play console.

Kids grow up and beside fansheep who buy anything Nintendo shits out those kids on Nintendo now will move on to XBOX and Playstation when Nintendo no longer has anything to appeal to them.

 

This is quite a weak argument on behalf of Nintendo. They probably just want to impose a tighter control on the supply line, that's all.

 

There are many arguments to keep region locking that I would understand, but this one isn't doing justice. I would understand if it were to correctly monitor regional sales of games or something involving localization differences, however the parental control excuse...

Here are the problems I have with that reasoning:

1. If it is an issue of parental controls, why not add region locking to the parental controls? That would work right?
-Or how about selling region free. Just sell the software for $60 that will remove the region lock. Stops kids from doing whatever you think would happen and teens and adults who care to import games can save money by buying the software instead of another console.

2. Nintendo, you just sealed the deal in sending out the message that you're a kids console. Your losing the interest of teens and adults.

3. Nintendo, look how many people want it. Also look at the other consoles. What do you think is going to happen? I think hackers will focus first on the Wii U and 3DS in an attempt to be the first to create a way to bypass the region codes. By doing this, the console also gets exposed to homebrew and piracy.

4. I don't see any parents pestering Microsoft and SONY about losing the region lock concept. Come to think of it, is anyone even asking for a region lock? Some people care to have it, some don't care whatsoever, but does anyone care to keep it? Maybe some selfish person that wants to prevent other parts of the world from feeling the same joy their XXX region only title has brought them.

5. The Wii U has such great sales. No need to listen to the masses and atracting more people to spend money on your console. OH wait...

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I hope your wrong or that Nintendo does eventually listen because without Nintendo, newer consoles will become boring. Microsoft and SONY will have no one to steal ideas and innovation from.

 

I hope I'm wrong too. But the sad truth is, Nintendo is getting less and less relevant with every stupid choice they make.