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Disappointing (Score:2)
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID (Score:2)
My first experience with region locking was with the PS/2 (purchased in Japan and unable to run games from anywhere else). Never again. Never.
What a stupid idea. Stupid!
I can't buy my wife most video players for sale in the US for the same reason.
Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
yea, this is a pretty disappointing announcement.
that makes no sense at all. region-locking isn't required for providing region-specific online services. even without region locks you can still have different region releases connect to different online servers. and even with region locks you can still import a Japanese DS and use it in the U.S. to connect to Japanese services.
the parental controls argument is also completely nonsense. there's no need to stop adult gamers from playing import titles just so a U.S. parent can control what games their child plays. if they're worried about conflicting rating (censorship) standards they can just add an option in the parental controls which lets parents region-lock that particular machine. what is so hard about that? and if the region-locking only affects DSi-specific games then kids will still be able to play games without parental controls. so what's the point of all this?
this whole DSi thing seems like a really dick move by Nintendo. not only are they confirming that the DS/Lite will be obsolete and unable to play many new releases (just 2 years after the DS Lite was launched), but they're also needlessly restricting consumer freedoms.
Parent
No more imports for you (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless someone invents a workaround.
And that's bound to happen.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I give it six months from release, tops, before someone manages to load homebrew on it - and another three at most before a way of loading dumps of commercial games and patching around the region locking in them is found. Then, maybe 12 months at most before flashcarts for it become mass-market items that any idiot can use.
If we're looking at ONLY a way to work around the region locking, I'd expect an outboard device in less than three months from release.
With a built-in SD slot this thing is going to be GR
Re:No more imports for you (Score:5, Informative)
The DSi, however, will be able to play standard Nintendo software from any region, similar to the original Nintendo DS model and the Nintendo DS Lite.
The article is only partly right; the region-free aspect is only going to happen for games. Whatever new shenanigans they come up with for the DSi is what will be region locked.
Parent
Why would you do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just do a check on the region, and have a default if you have no content tailored for that region
Region locking is especially painful when it comes to portable devices. When I travel, one of the advantages of a DS is that if I see a game I am interested in, I know I can buy it and play it regardless of where I bought my DS.
All I can say is that this greatly reduces my enthusiasm for the device as it becomes more clear that Nintendo want to keep the region restrictions that allow the crazy price variations viable. In Australia it is still cheaper to buy a console and games from the US and pay shipping than buying them from the actual storefront.
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Exactly! Why the $#@) would nintendo switch over to the Dark Side on this issue now?!? I bought the original DS shortly after launch and bought a lite a few years later and this is how nintendo rewards me? While traveling international it's great as is, there are also some great games that won't be released in other countries due to licensing and "they won't be that into it" reasons. Electroplankton, jump superstars...
The one -potential- justification I could see is the piracy that goes on, they sell ca
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the original NDS isn't region locked and I doubt they won't to ignore the what? 50+ millions? of those sold. So most titles will still be ok. And since we probably don't know all about what kind of software it will run I think it's a little to early to get upset because maybe it won't matter much. Time will tell.
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The one -potential- justification I could see is the piracy that goes on, they sell cartridges that allow you to download and store any DS games you want onto a flash-based system apperantly. Region locking might cut down on that... for a day or two.
Nope, not even that.
The piracy going on has to do with people selling Nintendo game cartridges as genuine, except with counterfeit parts, etc. At least that's the piracy that bit me and I never expected shrink wrapped Nintendo-labeled cartridges to be a problem.
There is NO justification for region lockout. None.
Peter Pan (Score:3, Interesting)
There is NO justification for region lockout. None.
Say you develop a video game based on a book. Copyright in the book has expired in your region, but the copyright still subsists in another major market. You do not want to be sued in the other market for copyright infringement. So you region-lock your product to reduce your exposure to copyright lawsuits.
Case in point: Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. Barrie wrote the novel Peter and Wendy in 1911 and willed the copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital. The United States copyright expired in the 1960s under t
Re: (Score:2)
Region locking is especially painful when it comes to portable devices. When I travel, one of the advantages of a DS is that if I see a game I am interested in, I know I can buy it and play it regardless of where I bought my DS.
It's painful in any kind of device. It is, or should be, well known that Japan gets the first and best of anything and many of us like practicing our Japanese while gaming or just playing the original version of a game.
Of the cartridges I have for GBA, they are divided up into stuff I bought in Japan, stuff I bought in Singapore, stuff I bought at home (which are sadly all counterfeit pirates and now broken - I'm stupid and dense sometimes) and stuff I bought in the US.
I think I'll try to get his & he
Region locking is lame (Score:2)
One of the most innovative games I have for the DS, Electroplankton was import-only because the distributors though Americans wouldn't like it.
Bad move (Score:2, Insightful)
Pandora FTW (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet another reason I cannot wait to get my hands on Pandora [openpandora.org]. My primary gaming handheld is currently a GP2X [wikipedia.org], but I am starting to outgrow it for non-gaming purposes.
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Not that it will get that many good commercial titles that region lock would make a difference anyway ...
Little homebrew is region locked =P, though still hacked in so to speak.
Region Locking (Score:2)
I have never really understood region locking, and I was never able to get an answer from people on why they did it. Is it just a method of control? Forcing people to only buy their region, and to wait for release of a product in their own, (or be SOL if it never comes). That really pisses me off if so.
Can someone explain that to me if they have a better understanding of it?
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The classical region locking allowed manufacturers to price products for specific areas. For example they sell things cheaper in India, because the cost of living and corresponding wages are lower there, despite exchange rates with countries like UK and US. This has the effect of blocking products like American movies sold in India cheaply making their way back to the US as cheap gray market and underpricing.
As companies will, this has gone from gray market deterrence to abuse of the consumers. For examp
Re: (Score:2)
The classical region locking allowed manufacturers to price products for specific areas. For example they sell things cheaper in India, because the cost of living and corresponding wages are lower there, despite exchange rates with countries like UK and US.
I can sort of see that being true now, given outfits like Amazon.com. But was this really true when region locking was invented?
Citations, please?
Re: (Score:2)
One word: Greed.
The best description I heard of it was when DVDs were the new thing. They were deliberately region locked because "Sometimes a film would come out on DVD in the USA while it was still in cinemas in other parts of the world and thus would hurt ticket sales". It never used to be a problem for VHS because the US and most of the rest of the world used 2 different TV systems (NTSC and PAL).
Games don't have a "cinema" release, obviously, but they do tend to have staggered releases (i.e. The US wil
Re: (Score:2)
Can someone explain that to me if they have a better understanding of it?
There have been "explanations" here, but they have mostly been of the form that content distributors == MPAA wish to have total control over where their content goes and WHEN.
What they have been trying to do with DRM is to duplicate the conditions of say the GBA where a GBA game cartridge only fits into a certain game playing device and can only be played there.
The conflict arises due to the fact that people have reasonable expections of playing GBA games on a GBA handheld and nothing else. If they want to
Region locking still legal? (Score:2, Insightful)
At the age of global free trade, when companies can legally utilize anywhere in the world the lowest cost labour, cheapest material, biggest tax advantage - is it still legal for companies to limit consumers with region locking?
Re:Region locked? Sounds like... (Score:5, Informative)
It also sounds a lot like something Nintendo would do:
The Nintendo Wii has region locking, and many games (such as Zelda) use it.
The Nintendo Gamecube and SNES also had region locking, though more primitive.
The Sony PSP supports region locking of UMD movies and games, but no games are locked.
The Sony PS3 supports some degree of region locking for games, but no games are locked.
(Please someone correct me if I'm wrong about any of these)
Parent
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Nintendo dangled the carrot for Wii being region-free, then abruptly said "our bad.. it's locked."
Now they want to retroactively lock their handhelds. Bleh.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The NES and SNES didn't use regioning (Score:3, Informative)
I actually don't think the NES and SNES were region locked per say. At least not intentionally.
The hardware between the FC and the NES was very different. The cartriges had a different amount of pins, meaning games had to literally be ported. The lock out chip (famous for creating the blinking power light and yellow screen) wasn't made to create separate regions, it was created to keep cheap/pirated games off of the market. The last revision of the NES removed the lock out chip functionality from the
Re: (Score:2)
I was a little off on the description of the FC. The controllers had a microphone on them, not a speaker. Also, there were volume controls on the controllers.
I wish I could find a picture of the original NES design that had failed. But at least wikipedia mentions it in their NES article under the title "Original chassis/casing". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And even the N64 wasn't much of a region lock. You could either:
a) Buy the adapter for $10
b) Be cheap and get a needlenose pliers and/or a soldering iron to pull out the notch next to the connector in the console (or modify the case of the game itself if you really wanted to).
I know it only took me about 5 minutes and I was playing my import copy of Goemon 64 :)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, region locking was the wrong word there. I was trying to say that was the first time I felt that Nintendo was intentionally trying to separate the Japanese and North American markets through artificial means (the tabs). Speaking of which, it was a lot of fun melting the tabs off back in the day.
This message is licensed for sale and play in... (Score:5, Informative)
Your right in that Nintendo seems to be on a general path to region locking and Sony seems to be doing the opposite. Regardless, the DSi issue especially is a shock to many because the time to pull a switch like that would have been when the original DS was released. Changing their policies mid-game feels a bit cheap.
One thing that I want to point out is that in a few spots the region locking was differing hardware/features. Usually the actually region locking was ridiculously light otherwise. There was no game of making modchips that had to use stealth modes not to get caught.
I don't own a PSX either, but I do have one PSX-J game. I play it on an emulator because I would rather not have to buy a Japanese PSX. It'll be the same for the PS2 when I get fast enough of a computer. The PS3 was pleasant a surprise after those two. But still, Sony isn't too innocent with their PSP firmware race and blu-ray video regions. They are just the good guys right now. Are PSP movies regioned too?
In the end, most games are licensed for sale and usage in their specific regions. Until the big three stop putting that ridiculous label on everything, I will stay weary of all three. (If I was wrong somewhere in this post, someone please correct me.)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I will stay weary of all three.
I was weary a long time ago. Maybe it's time to go to bed. Perhaps you meant "wary"?
(If I was wrong somewhere in this post, someone please correct me.)
No problem.
-Your friendly local spelling and grammar nazi
Re:Region locked? Sounds like... (Score:4, Informative)
The Wii is not only region locked - it's technically mandatory. There is no "unlock" bit on games. You can pick a region or have the game not play at all.
For VC games / channels this is different - there's a code for "region free".
Of course, if they ever decide to release region free games, they could release a firmware update. But you'd have to install that update via the internet, because the game itself wouldn't even load to the point of installing its bundled updates.
Parent
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Sony does not currently region-lock PSP or PS3 games, despite aggressive (and mandatory) region locks on their previous-generation games and systems.
Is this true about the PS/3? I refuse to even consider another PS console due to the heartbreak I had with the region locking in the PS/2.
I love the GBA not only because it is a highly convenient for me being a handheld, but all of the games I purchased in Japan, some of which I still like to play from time to time, work. And I no longer have any functioning GBA units from my time in Japan.
Holy crap, how irresponsible! (Score:2, Funny)
Atheist Mom didn't remind Atheist Son to use protection when he screwed the hooker!
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Yes, Catholic priests hump choir boys in ALL regions.
(That said, most poo-poo heads who use the "athiest" misspelling are of the Jack Chick brand of Protestant hate-choir anyway and dislike Catholics almost more than us non-slavesouls.)
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But I suppose the lesson here is that the games are what counts... but no matter how great its games are, a company should never take the goodwill of their customers for granted.
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Simple, Nintendo is, in the groupthink, one of the companies that can do no wrong.
Re:I really hate Nintendo as a company... (Score:5, Informative)
Except the flashcarts uses the NDS-slot now adays. so this won't stop them. And if it would be as easy as just blocking a key or something such it would probably have been done by now. So I don't see how removing the GBA slot will stop the current piracy alternatives. It will also break a few utilities.
I think it was an issue with size.
Built in ram, bigger screens, SD-card reader, smaller size, something had to go, GBA-slot did.
Also maybe they want to sell GBA games as downloads to SD-card, which don't seem all that weird.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The DS is basically a GBA "with extra bits". Kinda like the Wii is an overclocked Gamecube with a few chips thrown in (Bluetooth, wifi, etc.). Even though the GBA slot on the DSi may be missing, the hardware is still there so it could easily play GBA games if it simply had access to them. I'm betting you're spot on about the SD card thing, or more than likely, downloadable titles that are probably little more than repackaged ROM files.
I give it a few months before someone has any ol' GBA Rom working on this
Re:I really hate Nintendo as a company... (Score:4, Interesting)
How on earth are they going to keep compatibility with DS games, then?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably by assuming the ARM7 code is their official binaries, and emulating those elsewhere. The official DS emulator from Nintendo, Ensata, doesn't even emulate the ARM7 at all. It provides the same functionality in software instead.
This would work on games developed with the offical SDK (all the commercial ones, I'm guessing) and not at all with homebrew.
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I'm really saddened to see this habit of abandoning earlier consoles. As a kid I had backwards compatibility with my Mega Drive for my Master System. I had it with my GBA for my GB games. I had it with my PS2 for my PSX games. And I had it with my DS for my GBA and GB games.
If the companies keep abandoning their earlier consoles in future versions, they'll see a lot less tie-in (if I can't play my PS2 games in the PS3, I have less incentive to get a PS3 and can instead weigh the merits for the Xbox360 and P
Re:I really hate Nintendo as a company... (Score:4, Informative)
It's technically neither and both - of course they didn't just get some leftover Gamecubes and up the clock speeds in them, but it's closer to being an "Overclocked gamecube" than simply being compatible with the Gamecube. It's not literally overclocked, but the processors inside are of the same type as in the Gamecube, just clocked slightly higher. Go have a read here [newsweek.com] if you don't believe me:
Hollywood, the Wii's GPU, also contains the southbridge and a DSP for audio processing. It is based on the GameCube's GPU, Flipper, and has no notable increases in programmability. However, it is clocked 50 percent higher (243Mhz versus 162Mhz). Most of the chip remains unchanged; for example, it still sports the same 3.1MB of embedded memory, distributed into separate pools for the frame buffer and textures. Similar to Flipper, Hollywood still sports a fixed-function pipeline, with no programmable vertex shaders. However, like in the GameCube, it is possible to emulate some pixel shaders by using "texture environment stages (TEVs)."
I've worked with the Wii on a professional level, Nintendo's OWN programming guidelines literally say something like "Develop your game as if it were a Gamecube game, then add in some nicer effects for polish". I'll dig out the manual if you still don't believe me.
Parent
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i agree with you, but Sony isn't much better. the console i own at the moment is a PSP, and i love it to death, but Sony is just as rabidly greedy and anti-consumer as Nintendo.
the PSP has gotten god knows how many firmware updates, and few of them add any value to the system. they were all pretty much put out just to break compatibility with CFW/homebrew. the PSP is such a powerful piece of hardware, yet there's no (official) software to take advantage of it.
for instance, the PSP's built-in media player do
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfair moderation!
Exhibit A: Nintendo absolutely hates piracy.
As well they should be. Piracy is a problem ... in Asia. Worse, at least in the Philippines it is hurting their reputation because the shrink wrapped pirate crap being sold under their name is just that - crap and breaks almost immediately.
Is there anyone here who seriously believes that someone should be encouraged to sell crap under someone else's name and be able get away with it? Really?
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Nintendo said that "it would require more than a firmware upgrade to play DVD's", and that they'd sell a Wii that could play DVD's for more money. However, some hackers found out that the Wii disc drive CAN actually play DVD's and made some homebrew to get it working.
Does the hackers' method license the CSS trade secrets, Macrovision patents, MPEG-2 decoder patents, Dolby Digital decoder patents, and other patents or trade secrets involved in DVD-Video playback? If not, then it isn't an authorized DVD player.
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Cause I for one would not like to receive offers to participate in an ARG with the DSi as the crux if it's taking place in New York City while I live in Los Angeles.
Better than receiving ads for subprime mortgages for property in California when you are living in the jungles of Mindanao. I got plenty of those. Thank you! Yahoo!