Let's say NX is more of an OS as well as an actual console / system, and I'm using Apples iOS as an example - I still won't be able to download Japanese games unless I have a Japanese iTunes / Nintendo account. For proper region free they need to overcome that. I mean there has to be a reason Apple does it, right?
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Iwata updates position on region-locking at Nintendo investor Q&A
- Thread starter Cheesemeister
- Start date
Stilton Disco
Member
Are people seriously brining up regional content and the associated licensing issues inherent to digital storefronts as a defence for hardware being region locked?
That's fucked up.
That's fucked up.
Cheesemeister
Member
For what it's worth, the exact same word for looking forward optimistically (前向き
was used in A3, where Iwata was telling Miyamoto his reactions from the meeting with NBC Universal in regards to a theme park deal.
So, yeah.
was used in A3, where Iwata was telling Miyamoto his reactions from the meeting with NBC Universal in regards to a theme park deal.So, yeah.
Don't know about PSAS, but pretty sure most/every DLC is region locked to your version of the game on Sony systems, not your console region. Bought a game from the US? Get the DLC from US PSN store, and so on.
I'm still not sure what does that have to do with what I've said, even if PSAS was region locked. I know Persona 4 Arena is region locked on PS3, but most other games are not, the point is not all developers want to region lock their games, so don't force it on everyone.
GhostTrick
Banned
Speaking of Q&A, no one here translated the question about NX yet ?
Region locking has NOTHING to do with piracy
stan423321
Member
Well, 3DS for example is known to have a technical problem with region free carts, in that they are technically supported by the machine (like Louvre thing proves), but they cannot contain a firmware update, since these cannot be region free and cart format doesn't work with many of these. This could be fixed with a firmware update, but offline user would first need a region-locked cartridge that would enable it.
Doesn't seem to be that much of an issue for 3DS modders...
So 3DS modders asked all sorts of publishers for a written contract change to enable region free and they actually got it from every single one of them? Fascinating.
Or did they just change it, because they don't have to care about contracts and stuff?
It depends.
When the company uses different keys for the regions, then it actually has something to do with piracy. If one key gets hacked, the remaining ones are still secret.
So why do they region lock then? I'm still not sure I understand the reasoning.
GhostTrick
Banned
To control regional pricing as well as please companies that are afraid of losing business because of importing.
test_account
XP-39C²
Fair enough, although i dont see what this in particular is related to console warriors. I just wanted to say that you can get that content regardless of which region your hardware is from, at least on Playstation. There is no IP-lock or anything like that in place, as far as i know. There might be a somewhat a hassle to juggle two or three accounts on Vita, but there is no real lock in place that keeps the content from not working on your system.
Do you mean registration keys? I dont think that those uses completely different algorithms depending on the region.
I don't know what exactly Nintendo did in case of 3DS.
But you could for example encrypt/sign software using region-specific keys.
You could also for example encrypt saves using different keys (I think Nintendo encrypts saves since this generation using console/handheld-specific keys, thanks to Wii saved game hacking. Wii allowed everyone to share saves with everyone else, which was abused for hacking purposes, which also resulted in piracy).
At least 2 PS3 games disagree.
At least one IP locked demo also disagrees.
Uncharted 1 for example had a region switch for blood, which made red blood disappear, when being played on a Japanese PS3.
PS3 for example always had the ability to region lock games. It just wasn't used that many times.
On top of that: Playstation has those weird X/O button settings, which are region-specific. And plenty of games simply do not support this properly. Which means there are games, that are not really region-locked, but not playable in certain PS3 regions. Sony could have either a) made their SDK idiot-proof, so that such issues could not happen or b) add a little option in the PS3 system menu, so that people could help themselves or c) set the option based on region information of the game. The switch between X/O and O/X is definitely an option internally, because homebrewed PS3s are able to change the setting. But they don't give a shit.
Hell, there are even games that at least "work", but the game displays "X", when it actually wants me to press "O" on my Hong Kong PS3.
This pseudo "region free" on Playstation is simply a nightmare.
DXB-KNIGHT
Member
So there is a high chance the NX will be region free, that's good!
D.Lo
Member
Except that it does, and as I outlined in my post actual evidence exists that it was proven to work. The 3DS was cracked for piracy first, before the region lock. So you could not pirate games outside the region of the hardware.
Keeping piracy in a single region would be a massive save for them, and easy to cut it down in say Japan and the U.S. Even if other territories went wild like the DS.
test_account
XP-39C²
I see. I dont know much about that, so i cant comment much on that unforthatenly other that save games should now be encrypted, indeed.
Yes, there is a handfull exceptions within hundreds or thousands of items that are available that disagrees indeed, but the huge majority agrees. I was mostly referring in general to what he said about DLC though, just to show that DLC is only tied to certain regions of the game, but you can easily get another account from that region, download the DLC and use it. There arent any locks in place for this, from what i know.
I dont think anyone who have read up on this are claiming that the PS3 is 100% region free by the way (this talk doesnt just cover PS3 either). Every PS3 is region locked to Bluray as well, its the same with PS4. However, in practical terms, it pretty much is region free when it comes to games. Even if the PS3 (or whatever system it might be) was only 10% region free, it would still be a lot better than a complete lockdown.
Out of curiousity, do you have a complete list over those exceptions? I'm curious to see how much of a nightmare it is.
I dont think it would save that much, because if those games doesnt exist in a certain region, the consumers wouldnt be able to buy them anyway, so it wouldnt result in a potential lost sale. It would be effective if a hacking solution would only work on one specific region hardware however (for example that piracy was only possible on european 3DS systems), but thats not the case with the 3DS from what i know.
They were encrypted on Wii as well. But Wii used one single key for every saved game on every console. Which resulted in hackers abusing it.
I don't like that Nintendo encrypts them now with a console-specific key. But I can fully understand why they are doing it.
When I have to choose between a Mario Kart full of cheaters and the inability to copy saved games around, then I will choose a cheater free system.
Yeah great. I love to buy a game and then figure out that it's one that doesn't work properly on my console.
If I had to choose between those 2, I actually prefer region locked systems. Because then I definitely know which games will and which games won't and I won't waste money on crap that doesn't work. Hell, I could simply buy a console from that region in case it bothers me so much. If I wanted to play all PS3 games w/o problems, I would also have to do exactly that.
Which is actually against PSN ToS, because you have to use fake addresses.
We are talking about games in here. And a console that calls itself region free for games, should actually work with every single game that is out there (I accept that PS1 and PS2 games via backward compatibility are region locked). And that is simply not the case with PS3. Which means calling PS3 region free is a blatant lie.
When games can have issues, that will make it unplayable on your foreign console and there is nothing to do about it in case it happens, then no, I totally disagree. Because then it's a gamble if it works or not and that's not acceptable at all.
It would have been easy for Sony to fix those issues in some way or another. But they couldn't be bothered with it. They don't even force publishers to fix their broken games.
I know that even Red Dead Redemption had X/O O/X issues. At least those were patched after some months, years or something like that.
Just Cause 2 also had issues, which I think were patched. Or maybe not. I don't know. I was able to play through all of it. Maybe it had wrong button prompts, no idea anymore.
Sleeping Dogs has or at least had wrong button prompts. At least it was fully playable even at release.
Trine 2 is/was fully broken because you couldn't assign skill points. No idea what they did about it. You have to contact their support. Maybe they at least gave you a code for the Asian release.
I could go on. Just google for "ps3 x o button games asia". Tons of hits.
There are quite a few big budget games that have those issues. It's simply unacceptable and it's a gamble to buy games.
There is of course no complete list. It's "figure it out by yourself". I think that's Sony's motto nowadays. See DS4 support on PS3.
The sad thing is that most people own a PS3 from their own region and buy games from their own region as well. Which means not that many people are affected at all, because most people simply do not use this so called "region free" functionality of PS3.
007 Blood Stone is one of the games that is totally unplayable on Asian PS3s. Activision support knows it. But they never released a patch. In fact they told various people to "just buy another 'region free' PS3 from EU/US region to play it". What makes it even worse is that Activision released the game in Japan 2 years later. Which means they must have fixed it for that version, but never bothered to release a patch.
If Nintendo goes region free, I hope they will actually do a proper job and not a Sony job.
WrenchNinja
Member
Price fixing
RichardKSJ
Member
You'll never fail in finding a group of people that will defend even the stupidest shit. For ever reason or cause there is followers and those that would defend it.
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I expect nothing from Nintendo on this at all, for now it's just talk. :/
Would be nice though, yup.
R_thanatos
Member
The NX is still open to theidea , maybe ? ( maybe as in if we decide to change our views and we decide to actually think more out of our box , and the sky is blue this morning and i win the lottery )
Ok then.
At least they are more aware than before that people want region free... considering how long it took them get a decent online experience, i'm worried.
Ok then.
At least they are more aware than before that people want region free... considering how long it took them get a decent online experience, i'm worried.
test_account
XP-39C²
You dont have to copy save games to be able to cheat though. As long as there are tools that lets you modify your own savegames, that is enough.
Fair enough. You can "region lock" your system manually now by the way. Its just to buy games only from the region where your console is from. If the system was physically region locked, you wouldnt have any other option anyway.
Yeah, i just mentioned it regarding if there is a technical limitation being in place or not. It doesnt seems that its something thats being enforced either, at least i havnt heard of any accounts being banned because of using a fake adress.
I know, that is why i'm saying that i dont think anyone who have read up on it is claiming that the PS3 is 100% region free. Just the fact that one single game is region locked is enough proof to show that. And also one game being region locked shows that the feature is included with the system. This shows that Sony included this feature and let the publishers decide for themself to use it or not. Sony didnt advertised the PS3 as being 100% region free, at least i never saw that. Otherwise i would find it weird to include a region locking system that the publishers could use.
Concidering how widespread internet usage is today, it probably shouldnt be too hard to find info about it before buying it yourself. If in doubt, just buy the game from the same region as the console you own. That would be your only option if the console was region locked anyway. Generally speaking, i dont think that region free is being advertised much either for any system. I dont think i've ever seen it being mentioned in a commercial, so a lot of people are probably not aware of such feature.
Yeah, Sony could probably have done something to assure that this didnt happened. Another question is if they had any responsibility in doing that. Concidering that they included a region lock function on the PS3, i would say no. Then they left those choices up to the publishers, in my opinion.
That said, i fully agree that it would be nice if all developers concidered the button issues. Its not an issue for every game, so its clearly something that the publishers could do. The PS4 from firmware 2.50 allows you to change the button layouts, a similar solution could perhaps be possible for the PS3 if there is enough RAM available for the OS to use such a function.
Thanks for the examples. I must admit that i was hoping to see a concrete list concidering that you said that it was simply a nightmare. That made me think that these things were well documented. There might not be a 100% complete list, but the community is usually pretty good when it comes to making lists about what works or not, even if its not 100% complete.
I dont think that the DS4 is officially supported on the PS3, so Sony would have obligation to ensure compability in that case.
That's what a reasonable rational human being might think. But apparently it is not true!
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...netflixs-failure-to-block-overseas-vpn-users/
Sony Pictures for example, firmly believes that using an out of region license is no different from piracy! I'm sure they're not the only ways who feel this way about digital rights management in entertainment!
SnakeSlashRO
Banned
Why would they do that? When you have people buying multiple consoles just to get down on specific titles?
I really hope this comes through... Sony has been the pioneer in this, I'd like to see nintendo catch up (well minus the vita, fuck that one region one memory card shit)
On Wii Saved Games were used to smuggle in the Homebrew Channel, which means the ability to run your or someone elses code.
Hackers only had to get that one single key and were able to modify one single saved game per region to get their code running on all consoles.
This method simply wouldn't work on 3DS/Wii U, because every single console has its own key to encrypt/decrypt saved games.
By selling the PS3 as a "region free" console, buying games from other regions should work. Always. Which simply isn't the case.
That fact is still wrong even when it's getting repeated over and over.
It's at least 2 games. Persona 4 Arena + Joysound Drive are explicitly region locked on PS3. And various others are not fully playable depending on the region of the console, which I have to see as region locked as well. There is not a lot difference between a game getting blocked and a game not being playable on a console from a specific region.
And at least the Metal Gear Rising demo was even IP region locked to the JP store.
So now it's my problem to figure out if a game works on the so called "region free" PS3 or if it doesn't? That's not what "region free" is supposed to be.
The games should simply WORK. All of them.
I would go a step further. It's PRIMARILY Sony's flipping job to at least implement an option to change the X/O button actions. That way buggy games wouldn't really be a problem. It would still be stupid, but at least fixable by the user him/herself.
This problem is going on for ages now.
It seems this feature won't fix it at all, because it doesn't let you specify a button for "confirm" / "maru" and "cancel" / "batsu" actions. You can only map X to O and O to X, but that's not what that issue is actually about.
You see, in the PS3 SDK you could either ask if a specific button was pressed or if the "confirm" or "cancel" button got pressed.
This "confirm" or "cancel" button translated to either X or O depending on the setting inside your console. And that's the whole problem. Some developers just assumed that "confirm" is always X and "cancel" is always O and didn't use the one actually asking for "X" or "O".
I think even some Sony software does exactly that instead of doing it properly. It's a systematic issue because of bad SDK design.
btw. what are you talking about not enough memory on PS3? The X/O switch IS ALREADY AN OPTION on PS3 internally. The user is just not able to change it. If I hacked my PS3, I could actually change this option. Permanently. I don't want the option to change it while playing a game. I just want an option to change it at all.
If those were actually well documented, it wouldn't be such a nightmare, because there would be a list, that you could simply check before buying. Instead there are sometimes forum posts complaing about the issue and most of the time, that's when a game is 100% unplayable and not when there are "just" wrong button prompts for QTEs and such.
Any game that I buy at or near release date is a gamble. Which is why I almost never buy any PS3 game at or near release date at all.
It simply seems that almost noone cares about it, because almost noone uses "region free" features. It's extremely niche. As I said - most people own a console from their own region and play games from their own region as well.
I think I imported a total of 1 or 2 games on DS in total.
Even my own situation with PS3 was caused by Sony's inability to simply release a white regular PS3 in Europe. That's why I got one from Hong Kong, while I was in Hong Kong. Would I have bought one from there in case a white PS3 would have been released in Europe? No. Would I have bought one in case I would have known how bad this "region free" functionality actually is? No.
People care about bluray region codes, but people who are able to check for those are a tiny minority, because almost everyone only owns a player from their own region. That's why there are still an insane amount of blurays on www.blu-ray.com, which are not properly checked and that's just inserting a bluray, checking if it plays and then removing it. Which takes around 10 seconds. Fully playing a game to check if something is broken on a console takes way more time.
Videogame "press" also doesn't give a crap about those issues.
I have noticed tons of button prompt issues in all sorts of games. Sure, I could have made some blog about it. But why should I put in even more effort, when those companies including Sony give a shit about it? They won't fix it anyway, because they don't care.
As I said - Sony could somewhat solve this whole button issue with a simple change inside their firmware. But they do not care. If more consumers would actually use the region free functionality, maybe they would care.
privitsan02
Member
Is there anyone "for" region lock? I always find it baffling that people "who don't care" about region lock act like they are for it.
Its one of the main reasons people tend to mod. Give the consumers what they want.
Best wishes.
Its one of the main reasons people tend to mod. Give the consumers what they want.
Best wishes.
Regionality of digital content on X1 and PS3/PS4 is an absolute non-issue.
Eolz
Member
First time I'm hearing that.
It is an issue. Not as big as Nintendo's current ones for sure, but still an issue that can be pretty tiring (Vita cards, DLC not working on copies from a different region, games locked to specific countries in Europe, etc).
Region locking your system actually makes it much more likely to be hacked because it's seen as a legitimate reason for white hats with no interest in piracy to hack it, which sadly inevitably is used by others towards that end
I really hope nintendo implement this as its been a huge roadblock for me buying any of their systems
I really hope nintendo implement this as its been a huge roadblock for me buying any of their systems
Going by what I've seen on Miiverse, yep. Either they think region locking is piracy or they're just defending Nintendo arbitrarily. I'm pretty sure they don't actually know what region locking is in some cases, they've just decided that it's probably a bad thing.
stargateheaven
Member
what's interesting is that even though the PS3 was region free, it's PS1/PS2 backwards compatibility was not region free.
hopefully nintendo see the future and have no region locking
hopefully nintendo see the future and have no region locking
It isn't even "the future", their handhelds were unlocked until the 3DS.
electroshockwave
Member
The weird thing is that was for discs. I could buy and play PS1 games from the Playstation store just fine.
protomouse
Member
Thank fucking Christ.
privitsan02
Member
I can't stand that. Even if its a small percentage of people who import, you're still locking them away from using features on your console that is there. I mean, if anything Nintendo is the one that refused to bring over the JRPG trio and Fatal Frame 4 last gen to NA. I personally had to mod my Wii to play some of those games before their eventual, yet delayed release here in limited form.
I wouldn't have a problem with region-locking if everything was available everywhere at fair and justified prices, but that's not the case.
Valkerionseven
Member
Yup, 9 times out of 10 we've seen projects to break region locking get morphed into making pirated games boot.
There is no point in region locking though. The amount of people willing to import a game from another country is small beans usually unless there is some huge silly reason behind it like Persona 4 Arena.
Discovered the joy of several Japan only import games that I will continue to support as long as there is no region locking barrier.... Was pretty upset when a freaking SRW hit wii and nope, no way to play it the legit way, which is completely silly.
Optional region locking would work pretty well on eShop/Virtual Console though. Leaving it up to publishers streamlines things, companies who are looking to overseas licensing deals could opt out, those who aren't could go in, indies could push their games worldwide without regional restrictions, and so on. And for consumers it'd be a simple matter to make the games importable in their region to be the only ones present in their eShop darabases. No confusion or research, simply buy from what's presented.
Notice how I specifically left out the Vita and wrote PS3/PS4 instead. Vita has huge digital region-locking issues,
Anyway, most of my physical PS3/PS4 games are from the US and I have no issues downloading content that comes bundled with in form of codes and such. Even buying DLC is no hassle.
X1 makes it even easier for, it completely removes the need for account switching.
Cheesemeister
Member
sörine;163404211 said:
That's basically what we have now, and it sucks. The whole point is to bypass any availability issues where regional releases are held up for BS or non-reasons.
Chittagong
Gold Member
They'll remove it for physical games at a time when game purchases are becoming digital on country based accounts
Trollololol
Trollololol
I'm just worried that there's going to be a Jump Superstars 3 sometime and we won't be able to play it.
Actually, this is just speculation on my part, but I'm wondering if region locking wasn't part of why J-Stars happened on the Vita instead of continuing the previous crossover series. If Shueshia was hoping for importers to attract more attention to their manga, they couldn't continue a Nintendo-published series.
Does anyone have an example of a current games system which is 100% region unlocked?
As far as I'm aware every console has different regional stores with different content available at different times with different pre-order bonuses, and so on. In music, movies, and mobile apps, it all differs by region. Nintendo may be behind the curve, but there isn't exactly a shining example for them to follow.
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