Persona 4 Arena - The first region locked PS3 game?

What can I say, Sony pisses me off. It seems I'm not in the minority either. Believe me, I don't want to hate Sony. I had good times with my PS1 and PS2 back when I was younger, but damn, Sony could at least meet me half way. It seems every day Sony finds something to say, or do, or don't do that irritates and insults me. They're more anti-consumer than Microsoft, and that's just sad.

Short story time! (Don't feel like reading? Don't care? Then just read the bolded line down below.)

Once upon a time, there was a financially poor high school student who couldn't find work and lacked a steady income. He really wanted a PS3, especially the infamous "599 US Dollar" 60GB model, because it had full backwards compatibility and could run Linux, features he was very interested in using that was lacking in the new models. He spent months saving up what little he could. Lucky in his freshman year of college, he found one in practically new condition with the box and everything, for a reasonable price.

He then took the PS3 home and was excited to finally have the sleek and sexy console in his possession. He decided to wait until he upgraded the hard drive before he used Linux. Then just weeks later, to his dismay, his family upgraded the firmware of the system. No big deal, right? Well, maybe if the update hadn't removed a key feature he was incredibly interested in, it fucking wouldn't be.

Sony took something perfectly legal that he went out of his way to acquire and removed it via software update, just because they could. It was that moment that he realized what was in store for the future of gaming. It was no longer about Linux, it was about how easy it is for companies to use legal loopholes to remove advertised features and software from your possession. What's worse, many people were fine with this and some even defended it. He became bitter, and hated what was becoming of his favorite hobby. Today, he spends his free time bitching about it on internet forums.

That guy... is me. Plot twist! Bet you didn't see that coming.

 

Sony is just another big company in spite of they have PlayStation brand. Just bussines.

 

Cute but by the time linux was removed PS3 was far cheaper and not $599. The being poor, sorry i've gone through it too. *shrug*

I'm not going to really argue on the point of it being wrong to remove stuff but it's usefulness was slim unless you seriously had to write cell code (it's not fun, I do that for work). There were far better and cheaper options out there if you needed a linux box on a tv.

 

I exaggerated a bit for dramatic effect, but that's a basic summary of what happened. That, and I felt like telling a condescending story for shits and giggles. It's what I do when I'm bored.

Yeah, it was cheaper used. I wasn't trying to say I saved up $599 to get the system (though I kinda had to anyway since controllers are expensive as hell and I can't play the damn thing without games). It just really pissed me off at the time that I spent almost a year saving up for the 60GB model only to have Sony take one of it's features from me literally 2 weeks after I bought it.

Even if I didn't use it often or at all, I still paid for it. I still wanted it. Otherwise, I would have settled for a cheaper slim model.

Besides, my main issue isn't about Linux. It's basically what I bolded before. Companies are finding more and more ways to screw over consumers. The whole Linux issue is just one of many.

 

Linux support was removed because it could be exploited to run unsigned code and install custom firmware. Sony removed it in a direct response to this.

 

And the average Joe who legitimately uses a service a product gets fucked in the ass once again!

Sony's efforts do nothing to stop hackers/homebrewers/pirates and only hurts US. The people who legitimately use a service.

This is the problem with the whole "Digital Age" you are entirely at the mercy of the maker. Regardless of it being positive or negative.

 

On the original point of region locking

It's a third party game, even up to the end of the PS3s life I still can't see Sony region locking any of it's games.

It is published by a smaller third party in europe who are probably glad that grey imports won't work

It does stop reimporting, which is good as it might make some Japanese more vocal about their governments policy on keeping the yen stupidly strong

The game is basically the same in all three regions, all have english and japanese options, same cover, etc. So what are you losing? I am sure the number of people wanting to import the Japanese version is going to be in the tens...

There has always been limited region locking anyway with PSN even in the same "region", in Europe a number of games only have language options in a specific number of regions. For example I have Gran Turismo 5 from Greece which only has English, Greek and Turkish as language options, in Portugal it is Portugese, Spanish and English. In Portugal, a lot of people import games from the UK as they are cheaper but in a game like Uncharted 3, they find that they can not download paid content for the game as the local service recognises that the game is not local.

Still two games in the last what 5 years that have region locking, ask an Xbox 360 owner how many region locked games he has...

 

Sounds like they just got scared.

 

Joystiq

 

I'm pretty sure it was removed because they found ways to exploit the HW to get into the protected lower levels of the system (where things like master keys and access to the SPU that does decryption reside). Yet it didn't help since someone found another way to get to the keys with out linux. =/

 

In other words, bullshit. Corporate bullshit. It's incredible how corporate decisions can destroy a game developer. Not even the whole criticism from their customers make those people realize their own stupidty.

Every country has their own currency issues. I don't see Atlus worried about Persona4 prices in Brazil ( i bet it will cost 200 Reais = 100 dollars ), so why should i care about their worries in Japan? Not interested on the game really, but hope it will be pirated to death.

 

Well, when they put it like that, it makes sense that they wouldn't want to lose a ton of money in Japan. Some people just assume that game companies are charities and run on magic pixie dust. I don't see those same people hating on Cave for region locking their games and charging ridiculous money for pooped out versions of ancient arcade games.

 

I never praised Cave either. Still Atlus will make the first PS3 region locked game. And that's 6 years after it's launch and after 700+ games released for it.

 

Street fighter IV isn't region locked. Mortal Kombat isn't region locked. BlazBlue CT and CS aren't region locked. Tekken 6 isn't region locked. U/MvC3 isn't region locked. King of Fighters XII and XIII aren't region locked. Soul Calibur IV and V aren't region locked. Street Fighter x Tekken isn't region locked.

Why does Atlus think they are so special? Do they think that just because they made some cheesy looking fighting game out of one of their cheesy JRPGs that it's automatically better than the others and worthy of being the first region locked game?

Yeah, this game looks full of cheese. Stinky, stinky cheese. Persona 4 (and 3 as well) is one of the corniest JRPGs I've ever played (though nowhere near as bad as some other ones irrelevant to this topic), and Arena is being made by the makers of BlazBlue, a game filled with Japanese cliches to the point of weeping hilarity. To me, this game couldn't possibly look any more stupid and full of cliched animu garbage. I actually liked both Persona 4 and BlazBlue to a lesser extent, but this game just looks overloaded with crap aimed for Japanese teenagers and weeaboos.

I might get it when it's cheaper, but there is no way in hell I'd ever play this with anyone in person.

 

Isn't the common difference none of those have Japanese text in USA? Even if they offered voice.

 

Well, the decision of not having region-locked games was to give hackers one reason less to crack Sony's protection. If Sony use region protection in newer consoles there will be modchips for them sooner than it was with the PS3.

 

Ok, but then why would Atlus bother adding Japanese text in the US version in first place? It's not like weeaboos can actually read Japanese anyway, otherwise they would just import the games from Japan and stop bitching about dual-audio or how the dubs suck. I don't know why they bothered with adding Japanese text to the US version, especially if they are worried about reverse importation.

 

When you've already programmed in a multi language feature, taking it away wastes development resources. Look at the European GBA games with more modes than we got. Despite releasing earlier on matching size carts. Kirby & the Amazing Mirror anyone?

 

Why would it waste resources? It's not like they're adding an extra level or anything. It shouldn't take much time or effort to remove something as basic as a language option. It would save them the headache of region locking it and the negative PR that comes with it.

 

Game companies are that lazy.