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Forum - View topicNEWS: Nintendo President Iwata: Company Will Consider Region-Free Consoles
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Minami-Asakura
Posts: 104 |
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Nintendo´s president could not be more retarded, its a testamtent that old farts like him fair to understand today's circumstances.
If I import a japanese game ninten d has nothing to do with it, I want to know exactly what issues N will have. I dont see region free being a headache for Sony except the time, at it was merely to Atlus, when it decided to region love Persona 4 Arena. What, N think they will have to give support and meet stupid countries regulations if they make consoles and games region free? That is the only explanation and what this old fart seems to seems to think. All I see is mere lies and lack of vision and retardants to keep old obsolete practices. |
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GiriOni
 Posts: 218 |
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Man, people don't know anything about region locking... well I posted this elsewhere and I'm too lazy to rewrite it: It's business, that's the only reason region locking even existed. While I see no region locking as a good thing in some cases there are certain problems: Ever seen the translation issues with games like Sword Art Online and Ar nosurge? SAO's translation was because of poor sales prediction due to a release in another region with a terrible English option. Ar nosurge lost the game before it (Ciel nosurge) due to various problems with its structure, and the release was translated incredibly patchy with stuff like NPC lines getting split so NPC's would talk but the rest of the talk would be pushed onto the beginning of another NPC's lines. In the end both boiled down to this: 'true fans', the ones who actually buy such niche games, had already bought the games from another region and thus profit potential was lowered along with budget which took quality down. It's unfortunate that this happens, but that is the state of a global world where there is a high amount of people who speak more languages. (And before anyone says 'Real fans would buy a ___ System if it was region locked, so region locking doesn't matter!', remember why so many people want to get rid of region locking) |
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Fedora-san
 Posts: 464 |
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You can't compare Sony to Nintendo. Unlike Nintendo, Sony has a lack of first party titles so reverse importation would hurt companies like Atlas rather than Sony. Most of Sony's games are third party, either western or Japanese. Also consider Sony of America heavily focuses on American games, which Japanese gamers are not going to reverse import since they have little interest in. Compared to a Nintendo title which might be cheaper in America than Japan. That's why games themselves can be regionlocked on the PS4 rather than the system as a whole. I suspect they saw how much money they lost due to imports on the DS and adopted region locking to curb it.
I'm personally of the mindset if you import Japanese games on such a regular basis, which can cost over 100 dollars sometimes, dropping another hundred for a Japanese system probably isn't out of your budget range, but I can see the hassle of doing so. |
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animalia555
Posts: 467 |
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personally I never got why region locking was needed for anything that depends on text, I mean why am I going to import/reverse import something if I have now clue what is going on in the game.
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pcj
 Posts: 94 |
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adam_omega
 Posts: 256 Location: Seven Seas |
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Nintendo region locked their system and started rolling out countless system updates because they wanted to make it incredibly difficult to make a flash cart for their new systems. Last edited by adam_omega on Thu Nov 06, 2014 5:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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The Count
 Posts: 303 Location: Milwaukee,WI |
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Northlander
 Posts: 901 |
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Because things that are released in the US might not be released in Europa... and on rare occasions, the other way around. I've had to import a good deal of games to be able to play them at all, like the Lunar games. Or Etrian Odyssey 2 and 3. For the former, I had to use special carts on my Megadrive/Mega CD system to be able to play the games at all (or modding my PS1, which has also given me the opportunity to import some excellent shooters for the system.) Of course, that sort of thing was a bit easier back then, and modding generally isn't an option anymore, at least not for me. But the first Etrian Odyssey game DID get an European release, which always made me wonder whether the second and third game didn't because people who wanted to play it had already imported it from the US long before the European release saw the light of day. With the region lock in place, I couldn't import the fourth game, but that one DID see an European release again, so... maybe? For instance, if there was no region locking, I could've played the original Xenosaga as well as the third game. Instead, the only one that got a release at all was the second game, which is a decision that still dumbfounds me to this day. Incidentally, at the time, I sent a mail to the company behind Xenosaga and asked if we'd ever see an European release. They actually replied too, and their reason was basically localisation: releasing stuff in Europe usually meant releasing a game in a lot of different languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and probably more. I found it an odd excuse, since most of the games I had -- RPGs in particular -- were mostly just in English. Then again, I do remember games basically starting out by letting you choose one out of... four, five or maybe six languages before even letting you loose on the game menues. These were mostly arcade-styled games with little to no ingame text or dialogue, though. Well, rambling aside; I do appreciate when a console doesn't enforce region locking... for practical reasons as someone who enjoys videogames, allowing me to get either US or Japanese versions when no official version is available to me. |
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animalia555
Posts: 467 |
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Fedora-san
Posts: 464 |
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First party doesn't entail other studios. Just because Naughty Dog or Sucker Punch's games are Sony exclusive does not make them first party titles. At best those would be second party, just like Microsoft didn't make Halo themselves and it was Bungie. Microsoft and Sony just publish those titles. First party as in the same vein as Miyamoto, Sakurai, Koizumi, and other in-house Nintendo developers actually make the games themselves, which is what separates Nintendo from the other two companies and why Nintendo consoles are largely focused on Nintendo games while Playstation and Xbox are multi-platform machines with interchangeable games. |
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The Count
Posts: 303 Location: Milwaukee,WI |
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the-antihero
 Posts: 726 |
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Nintendo needs to do more. For one thing, start using online stores like Amazon to sell prepaid cards or DLC codes or sell the latter at the Nintendo store. I don't understand why Diancie for Pokemon X and Y could only be accessed by PHYSICALLY going to a f*cking shop to get the code. They can have much better business that way because they will be accessible to countries that don't have gaming services.
I have 2 PSN accounts, a US and UK. I mainly use the UK but it's great to know wherever I am in the world, I can access either and pay for any service they provide. I'm playing US Tales of Xillia on my US account on a PS3 that was brought in to my country from the UK and I can access the DLC and buy prepaid cards on Amazon. And the idiots at Nintendo wonder why they're doing poorly in the console market compared to Sony. |
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doctordoom85
 Posts: 2093 |
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Wow, "old fart", seriously? The guy just recovered from a significant health issue. If you disagree with him, fine, but don't be a jerk about it. |
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The Nagabuchi
Posts: 103 |
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In terms of Japan, no, the vast majority of the Japanese populace do not read or speak Japanese despite taking it as a mandatory part of the education curriculum. There is also minimal interest (outside of a small hardcore group of FPS fans) in foreign made games, and very few people import games period. The only case where reverse importation for games might be an issue is for text-light games like mario or similar platformers. Even then, the people who did import would be a very very very miniscule minority. (disclaimer: 13 yrs living in Japan so far and I work at a Japanese videogame developer) Now, if you are talking about people in Europe importing the US version, I can see how that MIGHT be a slightly larger issue. Given the history of delayed releases in European and PAL territories however, it's been an accepted fact in the industry for the last 20 years or so that the hardcore users in PAL territories import. And again, its hardly a large enough chunk of the market to really be that much of an issue. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2774 Location: Toronto |
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If Nintendo were genuine about this, the comment wouldn't have been made weeks after launching yet another region locked platform.
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