Region Free Gaming the Key to Winning the Console War

[Shapyi]

PS3 is region free because Sony does not want people making mod chips with playing games in all regions as justification. I am glad that PS3 is region free, there are a lot of Japan only PS2 games I'd love to play but I have an unmodded PS2.

[Gottaa]

Sony Exec A: "Lets make the PS3 region free"
Sony Exec B: "Excellent idea, if we also close down all the import/export sites"
Sony Exec A: "Erm ......"
Sony Exec B: "The right hand giveth and the left hand taketh away"
Sony Exec A: "Bye then" *runs off*
Sony Exec B: "Muhahhahahahah"

Region Free is nice but it isn't everything, mainly because people are always resourceful enough to get around such limitations if they really want too, and I'm never really that eager to play things the very day they come out.

[pokeman54]

wragster, dude, you can't make that comparison.
gba, nds and psp have been out for a while. you can't compare them to ps3, wii and 360. plus, the only way that region-free will be effective is through online sites and whatnot. I doubt that online import games make up a substantial part of the amount of consoles or games sold, and judging from the actions taken by sony on lik-sang recently, they'll probably stay that way. The wii has region coding, but hey, it's by nintendo. anything by nintendo will sell big, regardless of what region it is, or what region it accepts. except for virtual boy. but this is no virtual boy. The wii will probably do very good even with region encoding. that is before an angry mob with broken tv's run down nintendo headquarters...or something.

[Baboon]

Isnt it time that all consoles were region free in todays small world ?

I think al consoles should defo be region free!

...but Im not sure $ony would agree with us getting our products ealier or cheaper by importing them - look what they did to Lik Sang!

[Ichijoe]

Whats the point in having Region-Free if Resellers (Asia), are to Chicken-Sh*t to bother with actually selling such Materials to those living in Europe?!

WTF does S0NY have against Europe anyway?!

[spikegrantham]

The Good thing is as we have seen from M$ that their region blocks arent concrete. It is up to the publisher whether they make their game region free. If success is seen with the Ps3's region free code then M$ can follow suit and do the same with just a phone call.

With the Pound being so strong against the dollar it would be silly not to get your games from the US this xmas.

[Mazero]

Uhm, PSP is not a "major" success.

Besides, handhelds are not selling good because gamers can import games, that's just stupid. Only pretty hardcore gamers, which are like 5-10% tops of all gamers, import games. Winning the market is not about convincing the hardcore gamers, it's about convincing the casual gamers, hardcore is just a bonus. I think PSP sells to Playstation Fans and people who like to play homebrews and emulators (like me). DS sells good because of their innovative and userfriendly games.

I think every console should be region free though, but I think it would be even better if companies released their games all over the world instead(preferably at the same time). If the company haven't got any plans for releasing it in said part of the world, then they can make it regionfree.

[SSaxdude]

I believe region free is nice, but it's far from winning the console war. Most people don't import games anyway. But for the people who do, there's always some modchip/bootdisk to get around the region protections.

[Vegetable]

Nintendo said the Wii is region free, except that the developers decide whether or not they will impose region restrictions on their games.

Although knowing Nintendo, I wouldn't put it past them to remove that feature and not tell anyone. Remember Wii's promised VGA connection?

[waternova]

I dunno, i could be wrong, but i believe some of the region regions for home consoles has to do with the PAL and NTSC (sp?) coding. the tv signals work off of different principles, so the systems are regional. Hence games for different systems are different. This does not account for all regions, this only excusses allowing for two regions a PAL and NTSC.

At least for older systems, then, it is not entirely game makers fault for region encoding. Same thing for DVDs.

If someone is more of an expert in such things, please clarify for me. thx.

Your Humble n00b,
Waternova