it was common use to home consoles being region locked. x360 and ps360 are also doing this. only not that often. the hypocrysis in this thread comes from judging this as a nintendo only thing. plain wrong
The Wii and Wii U appear to be region locked at a hardware level. This is incredibly shitty. This is a bad thing. This negatively impacts me. This negatively impacts many other people. Nintendo has not proven to be a good steward in terms of localizing their own titles.
Xbox 360 is region locked at a per-game level. Many games are region locked. This is bad and MS should be complained about, but there are also plenty of opportunities for importing.
The PS3 is not in any meaningful sense region locked. Of the ~1000 unique titles on the system (and I'd say well over 2000 unique region-game titles--in other words, counting the Japanese release of Ratchet and Clank separately from the US release),
1 has a region lock (3 counting the other two regions of that one game). Atlus should be strung up over region locking that game, and it's a real bummer that Sony allowed them to, but the PS3 is not in any meaningful sense region locked.
There's no hypocrisy in coming to the conclusion that Sony, while imperfect, has had a good record with the PS3; Microsoft, while heavily flawed, has done okay. Nintendo's position on imports is the worst of the three and should be condemned the most.
stumps, since you're here:
i think we can argue the merits of efforts like Operation Rainfall (or even less successful ones like Starman.net) for awareness, to what extent do you think that's viable here? because in nintendo's case, i think the people making the decisions in japan possibly have no real idea this is something consumers even value, and i'm wondering if there's any hypothetical effort that could alter that.
Region locking purports to solve two problems:
1) Multiple publishers have the same game in multiple regions; one doesn't want the other to erode their sales due to imports. I don't think this is all that important anymore, especially with digital options. I mean, in 2015, if Atlus wants to publish their games in the EU, they'll basically be able to, right? They'll just be digital only.
2) The same publisher has the game in multiple regions, but makes a different amount of profit per sale in each region, and doesn't want people in high-margin areas to import from low-margin areas. In the Japanese case, the most germane fear would be US->JPN imports, since JPN sales are more lucrative due to the high yen and the high MSRP over there. I think this fear is at least a little valid, I'm just unsympathetic.
I'm not 100% confident, but I'm also fairly certain that many of the biggest importers will simply buy multiple consoles. Not that Nintendo endorses it or anything, but I think that's their "solution" if you need one.
fair point, but...what if the pressure from pubs at this point is so minimal that the perception of fixing one of their base's complaints (as theyve clearly been working on with online, increased 3rd party support etc) was shown to be worthwhile? in a cost/benefit analysis sort've way.
I think this maybe subscribes a little bit too much of an active awareness or babysitting on Nintendo's part. They strike me as a company that simply mutes any issue that doesn't strike a certain awareness threshold with them. Many big companies do. Companies seek ROI in a very tangible way--it's not enough to simply make a good decision or a profitable one, but rather they don't invest their time or energy in anything considered small fry.