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[NobleXenon]

All they need to do now is to get rid of the DS backwards compatibility. :lol

 

[Amir0x]

Damn, game has SICK graphics for '72!

nintendo was really ahead of their time

 

[falconzss]

All they need to do now is to get rid of the DS backwards compatibility. :lol

just wait for the 3DSi...

 

[Lonely1]

One of the reasons the 3DS is a lock for me is that I don't own a DS.

 

[Grok4Spock]

People in this thread seem to be in one of the following categories:

1. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but will buy it anyway
2. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS and aren't going to buy it now
3. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but were never going to buy it anyway
4. Whining about Nintendo
5. Other

Oh NeoGAF, you never fail to come through...

 

[SenkiDala]

Damn... I enjoyed playing it at the NW11 but this news really sucks... I live in Tokyo so I kinda have no choice, but if I want to take games from my homeland (France) I'll be fucked...

Well. I still want it, BHR and SSFIV are so good, and Kid Icarus, and Zelda, and DOAD, and... Damn.

 

[Acosta]

People in this thread seem to be in one of the following categories:

1. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but will buy it anyway
2. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS and aren't going to buy it now
3. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but were never going to buy it anyway
4. Whining about Nintendo
5. Other

Oh NeoGAF, you never fail to come through...

What are we supposed to do? be happy? is this something we should celebrate?

 

[Glix]

People in this thread seem to be in one of the following categories:

1. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but will buy it anyway
2. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS and aren't going to buy it now
3. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but were never going to buy it anyway
4. Whining about Nintendo
5. Other

Oh NeoGAF, you never fail to come through...

I would hardly call a lot of the posts whining...

although yours kinda comes off like it!

 

[Clipper]

Someone said that region locking lowers piracy, but I don't understand how since piracy circumvents region locking?

The pirates are not the ones hacking the systems. The truly hardcore hackers these days are mostly anti-piracy. Once the system is open, it's a much easier job for the lesser-hacker pirates to start abusing the system.

There are two main features that the original, non-pirate hackers want on the systems: homebrew and region freeness. Provide those, and they have no incentive to attempt to hack the system, so you have less people in the scene and less competent ones too.

This is one of the thoughts of why it took the PS3 so long to fall. It was region free for its primary purpose and homebrew was possible through Other OS. Removing Other OS made it a target and it fell shortly after.

By making the 3DS region locked, there will be a lot of work being done to try to find a hole.

BTW - using google translate on that website...the Koreans are pissed that it is region restricted. Many of them are planning on importing North American 3DS & games because they are cheaper than the localized versions probably.

I'm Australian, and it's the same reason why I'm importing. If I buy locally, I have to pay nearly twice as much and typically have to wait several weeks or even months for the game to release. Back at the Wii launch and so on, exchange rates meant our games prices made sense. Now our dollar is worth a lot more, but the local prices never changed. It's all pretty silly, really.

 

[JustAnotherOtaku]

People in this thread seem to be in one of the following categories:

1. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but will buy it anyway
2. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS and aren't going to buy it now
3. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but were never going to buy it anyway
4. Whining about Nintendo
5. Other

Oh NeoGAF, you never fail to come through...

I'm a lot more surprised that people are coming into this thread to essentially say "lolz importers. I told you so". Why bother?

 

[Brazil]

People in this thread seem to be in one of the following categories:

1. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but will buy it anyway
2. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS and aren't going to buy it now
3. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but were never going to buy it anyway
4. Whining about Nintendo
5. Other

Oh NeoGAF, you never fail to come through...

So what you're saying is that no one should post in this thread at all?

I mean, even if our posts fall into the "Other" category...

People in this thread seem to be in one of the following categories:

1. Hating on the game
2. Loving the game
3. Not caring about the game
4. Other

Oh NeoGAF, you never fail to come through...

 

[stonedwal]

It sucks, but my fiancee and I expected this to happen and planned accordingly. I can't see us buying 3 consoles in the first year, but we will certainly get one for each region.

 

[MidnightScott]

By making the 3DS region locked, there will be a lot of work being done to try to find a hole.

I'm Australian, and it's the same reason why I'm importing. If I buy locally, I have to pay nearly twice as much and typically have to wait several weeks or even months for the game to release. Back at the Wii launch and so on, exchange rates meant our games prices made sense. Now our dollar is worth a lot more, but the local prices never changed. It's all pretty silly, really.

Yeah, I hope they do find a hole so I can import those bizarre Japanese games like Kyabajoppi and Ouendan 3(if it ever happens so help me god)

Yeah, I feel my Australian bro's pain...yall seriously get fucked over by the pricing and release schedule. However, at least Pokémon Black & White are getting released within a few days of eachother across the world.

 

[Palette Swap]

There are two main features that the original, non-pirate hackers want on the systems: homebrew and region freeness. Provide those, and they have no incentive to attempt to hack the system, so you have less people in the scene and less competent ones too.

And you are much more legitimate to crack down on any kind of hacking and equate it to piracy.

By making the 3DS region locked, there will be a lot of work being done to try to find a hole.

The irony is that in the end legitimate customers are more likely to be hampered by this than people who don't pay for their games. Which is the story of many copy protection schemes, from cd check to securom.

 

[Dabookerman]

Expected. Will hack. This shouldn't take too long. I think the hackers are up to the challenge. Good luck guys!

 

[Router]

blame piracy, not nintendo

That has absolutely nothing to do with it.

 

[duckroll]

People in this thread seem to be in one of the following categories:

1. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but will buy it anyway
2. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS and aren't going to buy it now
3. Whining about Nintendo region locking 3DS but were never going to buy it anyway
4. Whining about Nintendo
5. Other

Oh NeoGAF, you never fail to come through...

You forgot...

6. Banned for thread whining.

Good day.

 

[Jintor]

Hmmm. Should I go back on the fence, or pick up at launch and wait for a hack?

 

[Peff]

Hmmm. Should I go back on the fence, or pick up at launch and wait for a hack?

If you're really interested in the launch games, you might as well pick it up anyways. Any hack will be compatible with a launch console, but maybe not with a revision or a normal 3DS that comes with updated firmware.

 

[Eteric Rice]

It doesn't effect me, nor most people. But it does suck for those that it does effect.

Not to mention it's going to make pirating more likely.

Hope Nintendo has a constantly evolving strategy against piracy, because I'm willing to bet hackers are going to be quick to break this thing in.

 

[Zachack]

This fucking sucks.

So if i take my 3DS with me on a holiday in the states I cant buy games.

I thought this was supposed to be a portable. Fucking Nintendo and their old school bullshit!

We don't want you buying things that we like when you visit, we want you buying things that we make for people who are visiting. Like shirts with the name of the place you are visiting, or a flattened out penny (I believe you call these farthings or ha'pence) with some detail stamped on. Besides, if you bought our games then you'd be exposed to the reason why USA (and Vs) Rules #1: we don't waste time putting extra letters in things, like the letter "u" in color, or an extra "i" in aluminum.

You forgot...

6. Banned for thread whining.

Good day.

I'm pretty sure 5 was a catch-all.

 

[Witchfinder General]

Whelp, looks like I'm importing one from the US. I need my Atlus games.

 

[idwl]

Guess I'd buy an american version. Would be cheapest overall. Even with shipping costs for games. And most games do get released in U.S first. So no big deal .

 

[BigBadShamoo]

I think region locking anything screws over early adopters.

Like say I imported Pokemon, I'd more than likely buy it again when it came to my region in my language.


Oh wait, I see what you did there Nintendo. *sigh*

 

[Jintor]

If you're really interested in the launch games, you might as well pick it up anyways. Any hack will be compatible with a launch console, but maybe not with a revision or a normal 3DS that comes with updated firmware.

Mmm, given passive online functionality it's not unfeasible that Nintendo might force firmware revisions on launch consoles...

 

[Zachack]

Mmm, given passive online functionality it's not unfeasible that Nintendo might force firmware revisions on launch consoles...

Hackers haven't had a problem dealing with that in the past.

 

[Rich!]

Mmm, given passive online functionality it's not unfeasible that Nintendo might force firmware revisions on launch consoles...

"Heh, installed a region free hack. YESS"

(one bus ride home later)

"oh fuck, a new firmware has downloaded automatically from someone else's 3DS. FUCK"

I imagine something like that. It's stupidly clever. Obviously, a future custom firmware may well have a disable function, but I expect it to be tied into a lot of games.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

No firmware bullshit will stop the hacking. That's just how it is. They can try but they won't succeed. People will always get what they want if you don't give it to them.

 

[Amir0x]

I guess it would suck if there's a situation like Inazuma Eleven where it comes to Europe maybe but never comes to the USA.

I dunno but I guess since I don't know moon language and have no interest in learning it's just not something that impacts me too often.

Until Mother 4, of course.

 

[trinest]

I hope theres a region free master mode which hackers can easily get too- or that publishers can use instead of trying to give everything a region.

Region locking is horrible for Australians the most, we get the raw end of the stick the most of the time- however I could kind of live with our region = the UK Region, so then I'd buy UK games and be happy cause they are cheap. But it seems its a region region lock, which is just disgusting Nintendo would go to those lengths for no reason.

 

[Jintor]

I'm going to be so mad if this shuts me out of (possible future) Ouendan 3

 

[Clipper]

Expected. Will hack. This shouldn't take too long. I think the hackers are up to the challenge. Good luck guys!

The DSi hasn't been hacked yet and there have been people trying fairly strongly. If the rumours are true that Nintendo has totally changed their security mechanism to be super secure and not relying on the old system, then it means that even the DSi work so far will be useless. The 3DS could easily last as long as the PS3 did, or even longer before there is a hack.

If you're really interested in the launch games, you might as well pick it up anyways. Any hack will be compatible with a launch console, but maybe not with a revision or a normal 3DS that comes with updated firmware.

There is a possibility that a newer system might introduce some new vulnerability not present in older models. Chances of it backfiring in such a way are extremely unlikely.

"Heh, installed a region free hack. YESS"

(one bus ride home later)

"oh fuck, a new firmware has downloaded automatically from someone else's 3DS. FUCK"

I imagine something like that. It's stupidly clever. Obviously, a future custom firmware may well have a disable function, but I expect it to be tied into a lot of games.

Thankfully, that particular scenario probably won't happen. If SpotPass or StreetPass were used for forced updates, then if the system was hacked, you have instant devastating virus potential.

Plus, the region free hack could just disable SpotPass/StreetPass.

I hope theres a region free master mode which hackers can easily get too- or that publishers can use instead of trying to give everything a region.

Region locking is horrible for Australians the most, we get the raw end of the stick the most of the time- however I could kind of live with our region = the UK Region, so then I'd buy UK games and be happy cause they are cheap. But it seems its a region region lock, which is just disgusting Nintendo would go to those lengths for no reason.

Are we not the same region as the UK with relation to DSi games? I never checked this, myself. I know the online shop is country bound, but I assumed the games were still using the US, Japan, Korea and PAL regions like on the Wii.

 

[Starwolf_UK]

You will. Normal DS games don't have the region in the header, they're completely region free.

Normal DS games can still be region locked. Depends on if the RSA signature used in games post DSi launch was region specific or not:

But most important of all, the DSi menu does additional integrity checking prior to booting the cartridge.

The integrity checking is there to ensure that the cartridge booted is a genuine licensed game cartridge. There is a whitelist stored in the DSi’s NAND, that has an entry for every DS game released, consisting of multiple SHA1 (How these hashes are constructed exactly hasn’t been confirmed) checksums for the cart header, ARM9 binary and ARM7 binary.

I hear you thinking, what about newly released DS games? How will they ever boot on a DSi without an update to the whitelist? Newer DS games come with a RSA signature in the header and so don’t need to be explicitly whitelisted.

What stops Nintendo making the whitelists region specific to firmware? I admit it would be an utterly spiteful thing to do and big waste of an employees time. "Here sort this table of 4000 entries into 4 (or more) separate ones".

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

Normal DS games can still be region locked. Depends on if the RSA signature used in games post DSi launch was region specific or not:

What stops Nintendo making the whitelists region specific to firmware? I admit it would be an utterly spiteful thing to do and big waste of an employees time. "Here sort this table of 4000 entries into 4 (or more) separate ones".

There's only a handful of DSi enhanced games at retail anyway and only 4 of them are of any real significance (Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, Mario VS DK: Miniland Mayhem, Face Training and Pokemon Black & White).

And there's no way to detect the region of a normal DS game so they couldn't region lock it even if they wanted to. You're just scaremongering.

 

[Foffy]

The DSi hasn't been hacked yet and there have been people trying fairly strongly. If the rumours are true that Nintendo has totally changed their security mechanism to be super secure and not relying on the old system, then it means that even the DSi work so far will be useless. The 3DS could easily last as long as the PS3 did, or even longer before there is a hack.

Take into account there wasn't such a desire in hacking the DSi. The homebrew scene there peaked at getting cards to actually work, as they deemed DSiWare to be largely undesirable. :lol

Putting region locking on a system will inspire more hackers to break that than the smaller majority that would ever want to hack a DSi to get the few worthwhile DSi games for free.

 

[falconzss]

Whelp, looks like I'm importing one from the US. I need my Atlus games.

same here my friend.

The DSi hasn't been hacked yet and there have been people trying fairly strongly. If the rumours are true that Nintendo has totally changed their security mechanism to be super secure and not relying on the old system, then it means that even the DSi work so far will be useless. The 3DS could easily last as long as the PS3 did, or even longer before there is a hack.

i think we will see a lot more effort being put into hacking the 3DS compared to DSi. The number of DSi only games is probably just too low to get worked up about it.

 

[Starwolf_UK]

And there's no way to detect the region of a normal DS game so they couldn't region lock it even if they wanted to. You're just scaremongering.

Its true you can't detect the region of a regular DS game. But if the 3DS uses DSi security in its DS legacy mode (more likely is it uses something more advanced) the regular DS games, due to lacking RSA signatures in their headers (a requirement Nintendo added with DSi and all retail titles released after its launch) have to be read off the whitelist. Make the whitelist region specific rather than a "all the games that came out before some date" and you've effectively region locked older games (but only the ones on the whitelist, the non DSi-enhanced games that came out after would still work depending on how the RSA signature works/is checked.

As for scaremongering. That wasn't the intention, I wanted to show it is possible (to some extent) to region lock previously regionless items if firmware is the gatekeeper.

Spoiler

They won't do it on either system as its a waste of manpower but technology isn't stopping them. I would bring up the whole gamecube freeloader/AR on Wii being blocked a few times as a counter example but AR is a route to gamecube homebrew.

 

[jamesinclair]

Not only is it idiotic, but Nintendo just has to drop in an extra steamer on top of it

"If you play a korean 3DS game with a Japanese 3DS system"

If they are going to force regions, it should be like blu-ray, only three of them.

Not 7 or 8.

 

[onipex]

meh. I don't care either way. Sucks for those that do I guess.

 

[Clipper]

Not only is it idiotic, but Nintendo just has to drop in an extra steamer on top of it

"If you play a korean 3DS game with a Japanese 3DS system"

If they are going to force regions, it should be like blu-ray, only three of them.

Not 7 or 8.

They only started selling games properly in Korea this generation. They gave them a special region as barely any of the existing games were in Korean. Nintendo has 4 regions currently (with the Wii) and it will likely stay that way: US, Japan, Korea and PAL.

 

[Mailenstein]

They only started selling games properly in Korea this generation. They gave them a special region as barely any of the existing games were in Korean. Nintendo has 4 regions currently (with the Wii) and it will likely stay that way: US, Japan, Korea and PAL.

You forgot Taiwan, mate.

 

[Kard8p3]

This sucks for people who import but since I only did it with Mother 3 this isn't something that really effects me.

 

[Tiktaalik]

Awful, foolish decision. I'm really disappointed in Nintendo here.

For the GBA and DS I imported a number of games, such as Rhythm Tengoku, Ouendan 1+2 and Tingle (from the UK). Whenever I was in Japan it was always fun to pick up random GBA games too.

 

[Somnid]

They only started selling games properly in Korea this generation. They gave them a special region as barely any of the existing games were in Korean. Nintendo has 4 regions currently (with the Wii) and it will likely stay that way: US, Japan, Korea and PAL.

Nintendo is trying to break into China. It'll happen with 3DS and it's probably one reason why they'd want region codes.

 

[NuclearWinter]

Oh well, I guess this means no more Shin Megami Tensei or Etrian Odyssey (or pretty much any Atlus 3DS game) for those of us in Europe then.

 

[mclem]

So far the only justification I've heard Nintendo give for region-locking, at least for the Wii, has been because parental controls wouldn't work without it, because of the different rating systems and stuff.

Why's that a problem? Just amalgamate the systems, and rate appropriately for the official released region.

Region A:
Rating levels: Universal, 12, 15, 18

Region B:
Rating levels: Universal, 15, 17, 21

3DS:
Rating levels: Universal, 12, 15, 17, 18, 21.

Region A is catered for, Region B is catered for, and with a localised front-end, the end user doesn't need to know anything about the actual options stored internally; they're just presented with appropriate controls for their region.

 

[mclem]

Whelp, looks like I'm importing one from the US. I need my Atlus games.

Y'see, you say that, but I can't help having a vague feeling that while the EU are less likely to get some Atlus titles, the US is less likely to get some Level 5 titles.

It's Sophie's Choice. I... I don't know.

 

[P90]

I would much prefer "gaming without borders", but that would be a rare (not Rare) game I would be importing from Japan.

 

[MidnightScott]

You forgot Taiwan, mate.

Chinese Wii's can play Japanese games though. It says it on their site somewhere lol.

 

[NuclearWinter]

Y'see, you say that, but I can't help having a vague feeling that while the EU are less likely to get some Atlus titles, the US is less likely to get some Level 5 titles.

It's Sophie's Choice. I... I don't know.

That, and do you really want to purchase a console new to the market with no warranty and the distinct possibility that you're going to be unable to play multiplayer with your local region friends for some titles?

I'm in the position of wanting games from both JP (because I use my DS to help with my Japanese study) and NA, as well as PAL. There's no way I'm buying three consoles so this just means I'm likely going to wait until the system is hacked until I buy one, instead of giving Nintendo my money on day 1 like I would have done with no region locking.