Comments on: Why region lock a console?

By: Lewie Procter

Lewie Procter — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:32:07 +0000

In reply to Space Coyote. I've never been charged anything when ordering from Play-Asia, but I take your point. I don't have any record of what the price differences have been historically, but there have been some pretty big ones (like half price for certain games).

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:30:34 +0000

Your discrepancy between the best UK price and the Play-Asia price for Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, doesn’t take into account import taxes and VAT. Once factored in, you actually lose the price advantage. International price competition is only a really a factor when games drop below £18, or with other retailers within the EU. That doesn’t rule out the fact that there might be better examples out there.

By: TheTingler

TheTingler — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 08:15:19 +0000

In reply to Hector. The full line-up is the best on any console revealed before launch, period. Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Zelda, Kid Icarus, Metal Gear Solid, Saint's Row, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and dozens of other major names. The launch line-up however is mostly terrible, with the best three games being a port of an N64 game (which may not be available at launch), a slightly dumbed down Street Fighter IV and the next Professor Layton game, which almost certainly will be Japan-only for at least a year (we've still got another DS one to go).

By: TheTingler

TheTingler — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 08:09:47 +0000

That last paragraph mirrored my own feelings exactly. The whole reason that handheld games aren’t region locked is because they are travel devices, to be taken on holiday, where you should be able to get new games for it and not worry about it not working.

Being region-locked and the pathetic battery life (both for the first time in Nintendo history – the Game Boy and even the DS got popular largely thanks to having a long battery life compared to the competition) seriously calls the 3DS into question as a travel device. And what’s the point of a handheld you can’t travel with?

There is one ray of hope, that this “confirmed” thing is just from a leaked internal email at Nintendo and could be just related to online store releases. I absolutely f***ing hope so.

By: Cheeky Monkey

Cheeky Monkey — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:37:05 +0000

Well you know it hasn’t hurt the Xbox 360 one bit. Many games are region free but there are publishers that do region lock games.

I don’t really buy your argument that they are going to face a lot of nerd rage. If there is one thing that seems to happen time and time again, it is that bitch about Nintendo products and then go and buy them in droves.

I personally will not pick up the 3ds.

By: Lewie Procter

Lewie Procter — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:20:27 +0000

In reply to Xagarath. Ah yes, I had meant to include the Etrian Odyseey games but forgot, and I'll add all of them now, cheers.

By: Xagarath

Xagarath — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:04:44 +0000

Missing large numbers of DS games that didn;t get released in Europe:
Devil Survivor, Strange Journey, Etrian Odyssey 2 and 3, Strange Journey, 99, Rune Factory 3 and Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime to name but a few.

By: Lewie Procter

Lewie Procter — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 17:45:18 +0000

In reply to samartriot. USA.

By: samartriot

samartriot — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 17:29:49 +0000

where was Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland not released?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:47:29 +0000

Having owned several of the NDS games you list, I’m very tempted to wait too, despite there being a few games I’d like to play…the launch costs are obviously going to be higher 🙁

Stupid hardware needing to be hacked, just like the Wii, which had games released in America but not the EU sometimes! WTF?! Nintendo have a track record of poor publishing even without region locking, this is a pretty insane step all in all.

By: Hector

Hector — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:57:37 +0000

The software line-up for the 3DS is so laughably bad that I certainly won’t bother with this one, region-free or otherwise.

Nintendos business model now is to basically re-release all the old crappy games they can think of and to bring onboard only the kind of third party developers that creates shovelware.

By: cubed2D

cubed2D — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:29:39 +0000

Interesting point, the classic gameboy did store information on its carts about the region it came from, but did not use it for locking (didnt seem to use it for anything tbh). Nintendo partioned the world in to two regions, ‘Japan’ and ‘Other’. Pritty telling of how they saw the games market at the time.