RANT: Why does region-locking exist?

I know there are legitimate differences between PAL and NTSC signals in terms of audio and video, and those aren't what I'm wondering about, especially given that I've had PAL games play fine on my NTSC tv (typically using a clone system, which are usually region free).

My question is, why do hardware manufacturers of games and movies spend so much time and energy making sure games and movies can only be played in a certain geographical area? I mean, there's only a few types of people who would import games or movies:

1) People who want a game or movie that wasn't released in their region (I've bought some Doctor Who DVDs that weren't sold in the States, and there's a long list of games that weren't released in the US or Europe that got a Japanese release (and vice-versa)). My belief is that those people aren't really taking money from the local distributors, because they're buying something that ISN'T AVAILABLE WHERE THEY LIVE, and something they want so badly they're willing to pay up the nose for shipping (or fan-translate, which, while I don't know from experience, must be an arduous process) and usually buy special hardware to use it on (be it a foreign console, a clone, modding their own system, or a multi-region DVD player).

2) Purists who don't want the localized version (especially because some (usually older) games were censored heavily when they came across the ocean) or only want it on its original hardware (the thing that comes to my mind is how about half the pre-PSX FF games were only in Japan until Square made compilations).

3) Special circumstances made some games rarer in one region as opposed to the others (Panzer Dragoon Saga being an example), making it honestly cheaper to buy the game, pay for shipping from Japan, and get something to play it on (for the Saturn, I've found the Action Replay works pretty well).

All three of these groups constitute a relatively small minority of gamers (I'm not going to speak for film aficionados), and, if the next generation of consoles had no region protection, the vast majority of people would go about business as usual, because it's 100x more convenient to just walk down to Gamestop to buy your US copy of CoD 50 than it would be to buy it off eBay and pay $20+ for shipping and wait for a week to have it come from Japan. Most people who buy foreign games still buy a lot more domestically because it's a lot cheaper (maybe that's not the case for 100% of import gamers, but it seems most people (including myself) who buy foreign games have a large domestic library as well).

So I ask, why does region-locking exist?

 

I say its just the Developers being greedy trying to make more money off the import scene.

 

Industry favoritism toward the US. Game companies know they can charge other countries more for a largely similar product.

 

Companies like Sega had branches in different countries distributing their games and consoles so wanted a way to know what proportion of sales were from which region, you can see why they would do that in a way; if it were cheaper for example to buy from Japan or Europe for the same game, then people would do that and a company in say the UK would show poor sales as we had to generally pay more for things. Also, it allowed a company by the same token to stagger their distribution and marketing; if you bought a game from the wrong area after all (USA / Japan / Europe) it didn't work on an unmodded console. Film companies of course do it too, again so they can charge more in some countries (eg UK) than others unfairly, and also control who can see what, when. I've always thought this concept sucks, just like everyone else.

That is why there is region locking. It is outdated now of course as a concept.

Years ago, another form of region locking existed too, grossly unfair - the UK (and only a handful of other countries in the world) drives on the left side of the road, the rest of the world (thanks to the French probably, with Nepoleon taking the view if we drove on the left he would make France and their regions drive on the right, out of spite) drives on the right, so car makers charged up to double the cost of a UK car than one that drove on the right, because we were seen as a cash cow nation - that changed in recent years; at least that form of "region locking" is gone now.

 

Just to be dicks, put simply. lol.

Either way, if you buy a perfectly legal copy of a game in the US and want to play it in a PAL region, so what? What if I travel a lot? One thing I love about the PS3 it's region free.

 

It doesn't help the situation feel any more fair, with how rarely our post office charges duty on importing games.

 

From a financial point of view it makes sense for the companies now, with the Euro being much stronger than the dollar and PAL games being more expensive in general, plus the fact that importing is ridiculously easy thanks to the Internet. For the customers it's obviously unfair bullshit, but there's been a trend towards region-free Blu-Rays and some 360 games at least.

 

It's exists to ensure we (in europe) only buy Fifa and other COD crap lol

joke aside, I guess at a time without the internet it was there to ensure import sale wouldn't cannibalise local ones. Is it relevant today? Don't think so, peeps expect things to be released everywhere at the same time. Regions free PS3/PSP was a great step forward but look at the state of PSOne games available on Europe PSN Store, it still feels like prohibition. 2/3 of games are uninteresting/crap. Licensing is perhaps the issue, for some reasons companies don't want their product released in certain countries, I guess that's why we haven't seen the likes of Thunder Force V, R-Type Delta pop up in Pal PSN store. Shame 'cause i'd be ready to pay for these... Again...

 

A lot of it can fall to licensing issues I guess ... trying to obtain different rights for different regions can be a complete minefield.

 

Rights to play some titles are only relevant to some countries depending on content, for example, Germany doesn't like games that refer to their fascist past, so for example banned Wolfenstein back in the day; some countries don't like "blood" in games so the games show in green blood not red; however of course that is only exceptions to the rule for distribution not the norm. Also, thanks to the internet, a lot of those old walls are not like they used to be for software.

 

Mostly it comes down to distribution rights for that region. For example Fox might have the rights to distribute a movie in the US and UK but Warner Bros has the right for the rest of the world. It is the same with games. Capcom for example is the publisher in Japan for the Grand Theft Auto games. They don't want their profits cannibalized by Rockstar published copies from the US.

 

We may soon have super region locking

 

I believe that localisation is often handled by the local companies, justifying a translation when a large proportion of your potential customers will have already completed the game is tricky. Importing is only going to be popular if the localised releases are a long time behind their original release, but this is often when the cost to localise is the highest.

 

What do you mean by "Super region locking?"

 

I'm guessing something like in The Ring. If you play something not designated for your region then a ghost will come and scare you to death within 48 hours.

Honestly, the gaming world would be a much better place if Sega had implemented their version using Segata Sanshiro (though in that case it wouldn't be the region that mattered, he'd just beat the shit out of you for playing something other than Saturn).

 

The Only region you can play the game is your living room.

Sort of that's only if you try to play the game on a console other than the one you first played it on.

 

I think one of the reasons Sony got rid of the region locking on the PS3 was to kill the modchip industry.

The one and only region locked game on the PS3, Persona 4 Arena, still isn't available on Europe. Wonder how many sales it lost by pissing of their fans.

 

That's Atlus' fault though

 

Probably not enough to offset the obsessive fans buying the European version for at least 25% more than the imported US version. Like I said, it makes financial sense.

 

Exactly. They tried to do something everybody hates, on a region free console, with the excuse to protect sales because of currency differences. What they did pissed of a lot of people and their own incompetence made the whole thing even worse.